


simple words of love

by chaoticsandstorm



Series: the things we give to each other [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aftermath of Colonialism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula (Avatar)-centric, Colonialism, F/F, Firelord Azula (Avatar), Firelord Regent Zuko (Avatar), Gen, Imperialism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Mental Health Issues, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Recovery, Useless Lesbian Azula (Avatar), did i just add more tags ahead of the chapter update?, i would like sleep, perhaps, roadtrip to Hira'a, they share i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27188792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticsandstorm/pseuds/chaoticsandstorm
Summary: The war is over. Azula and Zuko must make a decision about the throne, and finally subdue the court. A surprise letter changes everything.OR: Azula and Zuko leave the palace in search of their mother.
Relationships: Azula & The Gaang (Avatar), Azula & Toph Beifong, Azula & Ursa & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: the things we give to each other [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829854
Comments: 269
Kudos: 431





	1. new moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!! welcome back!! very excited to have you again!! i wrote 1,000 words extra for this chapter because i got excited so have fun lmao. updates for this fic may be slower than the previous one but i'm still expecting to update every 1-2 weeks.
> 
> okay some notes:  
> \- Azula isn't in a great place mentally with the impact of the invasion and turning against her father  
> \- this WILL improve and we'll get to see badass Fire Lord Azula, i pinky promise  
> \- but right now we're giving her some time to grieve and try and recover  
> this will improve in the next chapter or so!
> 
> new moon - the moon is exactly aligned with the sun

_“Are they quite beyond you,_

_the simple words of love? Say them._

_You are not my mother;_

_with my mother, I waited unto death.”_

\- ‘Moon’, Kathleen Jamie 

Azula takes to the throne without protest. How could she? This is what she wanted since she was first told as a child. The ministers approve of her instalment. They must, with the only options being herself and Zuko. Two traitors. At least Azula held on a little longer. News of her treason hadn’t yet spread to the people by the time of their coup.

There are rumours now, of course. _Azula is a snake hiding in red. She would do anything for her own gain._ These are the rumours that people murmur, encouraged in secret by the ministers and advisors she helped detain on the night of the coup. Zuko thinks it is funny. He denies it, of course, but she has seen him turn his face away, shoulders shaking with laughter, when the ministers freeze at the sight of them.

Azula always knew that she and Zuko were judged by different standards. Father had never cared that she was a girl, so long as she excelled. That was the only time he ever did right by her. Ozai was not an obstacle, but the servants and instructors who all frowned when she walked too quickly, ate too much, had a hair out of place, made their message clear. One tutor said she was outstanding at military tactics. _For a girl._ Azula smiled and smiled then set his robes on fire, and father tolerated it because he thought it was merely another show of cruelty.

She had liked learning cartwheels and other tricks with Ty Lee in the gardens. Azula was young, so they tolerated her wearing tunics and pants. Then Ursa left and they tried ushering her into dresses. _You must prove your mother’s absence has not led you astray._ Father intervened, bored as ever with Azula’s affairs, saying that Azula could wear what she liked. She kept to pants and continued with her firebending training.

The fact remains: Azula was scolded for wearing pants because ladies of her class wear dresses. She was told she walks too quickly, that she needs to take short steps and glide through the hallways. The ministers turned their eyes upon her and saw _girl_ before they saw _Ozai’s heir._ Zuko was treated cruelly in the palace. They preyed upon his weakness. But no matter how bad things got for Zuko, no one ever accused him of failing because of his gender. Meanwhile, Azula had to overcome their assumptions about her gender before she could prove herself.

If Zuko were the ambitious one, they would praise his smarts, his cunning. But that role has fallen to Azula. Instead of praise, all she earns is criticism from the people who think that she should be warmer.

Women can learn firebending. They have not been banned from reading and writing for decades, now. The Fire Nation prides itself on treating women better than the other, savage nations, like the barbarians in the North who prevent their women from learning to fight. _Proof,_ they crow. _The Fire Nation is superior._ Women are permitted in the military and can rise through the ranks. But are they _welcome?_

It was a question Azula had never pondered until she took command at her father’s request and found that the generals she was to work with were all male. A female Fire Lord may be approved on paper, but in reality, Azula is listening to the servants whisper outside her door that it is a shame she was not born male. Then she could be a brilliant leader.

“Breathe,” Zuko tells her, but Zuko does not understand what it is like to be thirteen and trying to prove that your gender is not weak to a room full of judging eyes, then fourteen and still battling the same people.

“It’ll get better,” Zuko says, but that is the problem. They always approve at first. They smile and say _so good to have a girl on board, what focus, what determination._ Things start off bad then improve, right up until Azula proves herself better than the men. Their faces quickly turn sour.

The ministers will approve of her crowning until they realise they cannot bully or manipulate her. Then they will try to replace her with Zuko. Not to mention the countless assassins creeping through the walls, all belonging to organisations or families who think that there should not be another Fire Lord. Azula caught an Earth Kingdom assassin once. She wrote to Toph about his identity, recalling that he came from the same region as her. But not all assassins come from other nations. There are people within who object to anyone but Ozai on the throne, and others who think there should not be a royal family at all.

The protests in the street are quickly silenced. Azula asks no questions. 

Toph says their group doesn’t care that Azula is Fire Lord.

 _It’s strange,_ she admitted in a letter, a stranger’s handwriting marking the page. _I guess we didn’t really think about who would become Fire Lord. I didn’t expect you. But it’s not a bad thing, Blue. You’re gonna be great and don’t let them tell you otherwise. Say hi to Sparky for me._

It has been almost a year since Azula was crowned. The world has calmed. The ministers were forced to relinquish their grudges over working for those who had them arrested. The court pulled together, because no matter how anyone despised the traitorous siblings ruling, there was a nation to run and people to feed.

Funny. Azula never realised how much paperwork was involved with being Fire Lord. She pushed it all to Zuko and gave him a regent’s seal so he could approve it without her being interrupted by ministers every hour. Zuko floundered beneath the sudden responsibility, then blossomed before her eyes. He walked taller. Instead of tolerating the advisors disrespecting him, he began calling for silence and saying _if my decisions bother you so much, then you can always leave._ He pointed to the door.

Azula laughed herself to breathlessness when she heard. The servants thought she was having a hysterical fit.

Initially, Azula worried that Zuko might try to steal the power from her or depose her. She fell into a dark place after the coup. Things were bright at first, with Azula taking the power she always dreamed of, and entering the palace once more with her brother by her side for good. Ozai was gone. Finally, after years of anxious hiding and manoeuvring, Azula no longer had to fear her father. Things should have been perfect. Instead, began waking with copper on her tongue and losing her appetite, and Zuko’s gaze grew increasingly worried. She spent her time mostly in the garden. That was permissible. Zuko was regent, so he could handle the duties in her place. Azula tried giving names to the turtleducks only to be politely informed by a servant that her mother gave names, years ago, and to rename them would be a breach in court decorum.

Azula laid in the grass and imagined the turtleducks drowning. The servants walked around her.

She isn’t _proud,_ of how she became after the coup. It was eerily reminiscent to her time in the Earth Kingdom with Zuko. Azula thought she would take easily to the role. She was trained for it, after all, in a way that Zuko never was. Yet he was the one holding the court together so Azula could fall apart. Azula watched and watched but Zuko never tried going over her head.

The palace was somehow louder, without Ozai. Nearly unrecognisable. Zuko could barely perceive the difference, too accustomed to his home being different every time he returned. He had learned to expect change.

“Places don’t stay the same,” Zuko told her once. His topknot was slowly unravelling while they reviewed documents, his eyes pensive but sad. “No matter how much you want them to.”

Azula hadn’t anticipated how much everything would change with Ozai’s defeat. The servants no longer kept their heads to the floor and even the ministers grew bolder. She had thought it was a sign of disrespect at first. Then she saw Zuko laughing with a servant and thought, _oh. This is recovery._

It took time before Azula could pick up her brush once more. She attends meetings now, mostly to intimidate them into agreeing with Zuko’s proposals. With Zuko as regent, her own role is mostly ceremonial. In the early days, when she fell into her personal valley, Zuko tried handling things by himself. That was fine. Azula had no energy for the throne. Then some days, she awoke with fire flooding her mind and screamed at Zuko for holding meetings without her.

“You are not Fire Lord,” she snarled. “ _I am.”_

What was worse was that Zuko tried hard not to fire back. He bit his tongue and shook his head and _apologised to her,_ telling her to lay back down before she interferes with her health. Azula hated him even more on those days. Why was Zuko strong where she was weak? She had wanted to be a good Fire Lord. She wanted to prove herself capable of good. Then she found herself sobbing by that stupid turtleduck pond, terrified that she had already become her father and it was too late. Ursa left, after all. She named the stupid turtleducks and left without a word goodbye. She never even told Azula the names.

“You don’t have to prove anything, Lala,” Zuko tries reassuring her. He sends food to her room that she doesn’t eat. “You just have to get better.”

Wouldn’t that be nice? She has a court that is steadily losing all respect for her, and a brother struggling to regain it. Azula should pull herself together. She should. She _has,_ isn’t staying in her room all the time or wading into the turtleduck pond for no reason other than to feel something. She sent her father to prison. She stood and watched as Aang stole Agni’s blessing from Ozai’s chest. His very _core._ Now Ozai rages in the palace dungeons and Azula still cannot summon the courage to see him. Zuko has, she knows. Another reason the advisors have lost respect for her.

Azula is doing better than she was a year ago when she was first crowned. But she knows she is still not what she used to be. Her bending grows stronger with each waning of the moon, but she has not tried summoning lightning. Not since the coup. Sometimes she swears she can still smell the ozone.

Azula does not regret turning on her father. Even after everything. What keeps her tossing and turning in her bed is the knowledge that maybe following Ozai was the only reason she was special. Without Ozai, she is nothing. She has no respect. No fear. Does Azula even mean anything beyond the throne? Beyond Ozai?

It is Suki who offers a way out.

 _If no one expects anything of you, then you can do anything,_ she wrote. _When I started leading Kyoshi into the war, no one thought we could accomplish anything. We were small. Weak. We spoke a strange dialect people pretended not to understand just because it was different. You say they’re underestimating you and ignoring you. That just means you get to choose what to be now, Azula._

Suki is frustratingly, infuriatingly correct. One day Azula will find her weakness. For now, she presses the letter to her chest and thinks of what she can do. There are the ministers and advisors pushing for the war to restart. Zuko has crushed those proposals as thoroughly as he can, with an impressively smooth declaration of:

“The Avatar destroyed an entire fleet at the North Pole. What makes you think we’d succeed? Get over yourselves.”

Negotiations are proceeding smoothly, with a representative of each nation comprising Team Avatar. Politicians are similarly self-interested across each nation, concerned more with re-election and less with lessening the impact of a hundred years of war. But Suki and Toph are working hard to earn the Earth Kingdom’s cooperation, and the trio of Aang, Katara, and Sokka are alternatively begging and threatening the compliance of the Water Tribes. If they weren’t united, the post-war negotiations would be three times more complicated than they are. As it is, the whole has descended unto an uneasy peace, resembling unsettled waves more than a true calm. Still, anything is better than the roiling storm of the war. Azula has learned to care for these things.

The court do not expect anything from her now, so she is in the perfect position to pull off something unexpected. No one can truly stop Azula if she wants to do something, but this way they cannot interfere or influence. Zuko draws attention as the more public figurehead and regent. Azula slips by unnoticed. It is an ironic reversal of their roles that Azula is slowly learning to tolerate. Everything is temporary. There is nothing that cannot be endured so long as you are alive. And this is easier to swallow than most. Zuko will not be regent forever, and they both know it. But he is here for her to rely on as long as she needs. It could be until she reaches adulthood, or even further after that. They have time. She is learning more and more that as fast as the years blur by, they still have time.

Azula is not truly sure what to do. She has taken on more of the Fire Lord duties, Zuko carefully trying to give her only what he cannot manage. Azula feels stronger. She can handle more and more. But paperwork still sends her mind to sleep in a way that strategy sessions and lessons never did. Something about the repetition leaves her struggling to stay awake. She fell asleep at her desk once, and the only reason she is not embarrassed about it is because she knows Zuko has done the same.

She wanders the rooms in her free time. There are dozens of unoccupied chambers she has never seen before, relics of a time when there was more than just Ozai and Azula residing in the palace. Zuko can likely remember better than her. She was only young when the world shrunk overnight. Mother gone, Lu Ten dead, Azulon dead. Then just as quickly, it became her and Ozai.

Azula stumbles across a room with an ornate door. The lock is rusted but a quick burst of fire has it falling to the ground with a clang. She steps over the threshold and loses her breath.

There are sheets tossed over the furniture, draped over chairs and a vanity built in the style of the old court, when such things were still in fashion. Azula drags a finger along the sheet and it comes away covered in dust. Azula was always curious. She never got in trouble for it the way Zuko did, because Azula was smart and knew how to hide behind curtains or use the servant’s passages when spying. Zuko may have learned how to hide in shadow, but Azula learned to move in the open without getting caught. There is no need to curb her curiosity now. For a beat, her heart races and she looks instinctively to the door, but she is in charge. There is no one to scold her or beat her. Azula decided that she has the right to be in the room, so explore it she shall.

She reaches under the bed and feels for any hidden items. She doesn’t expect to find anything. There _shouldn’t_ be anything. Azula remembers the servants clearing this room out, a lifetime ago. They took everything. All she could salvage was a bracelet. 

Unexpectedly, her hands hit something. Azula moves onto her stomach and strains to reach, sliding it out from under the bed. She sits upright and stares down at it. A box of some description. She remembers these. They were used to hold cosmetics and perfumes, before the inner court decreased to almost nothing. Now only the wives of ministers remain.

Azula runs her hands along the lacquered lid. The flower patterns are smooth beneath her fingers, painted rather than carved. There is no lock, but a length of ribbon wound over the clasp. Azula burns through it, and tugging at the clasp quickly opens it, worn with age and misuse. Azula pauses at the bundle of letters. If Azula had thought about it, she should have expected this.

This was her mother’s room. She was never crowned Fire Lady, disappearing the night of Azulon's death. When she lived with them, she stayed here, in the princess consort’s chambers. Azula remembers creeping inside, keeping along the wall to avoid creaking floorboards, and climbing into bed with her mother. That was before her mother started locking her door at night.

This is unmistakably Ursa’s room. And she was never the type to keep cosmetics when she could use it to hide secrets. Of course the box would contain letters.

Azula’s vision narrows until all she can see is the red seal of wax, a thin line running through them. The letters are open. Someone has read them. Someone knows her mother’s words, when Azula herself cannot recall the sound of her mother’s voice. In her dreams, it deepens then lightens, changing from a child’s to an old woman’s. Azula doesn’t even know her mother's age. She could be dead, by now. 

The letters are addressed to Ursa. Some are signed _from_ Ursa, the sender location finely printed and clearly trying to disguise the fact that the address is in Hira'a. 

Ursa never went to Hira'a with them.

Azula opens the letter and finds the date. Of course. The letters are dated after Ursa’s departure. Her mother left and went to Hira'a. Azula breathes through her nose and lowers the box before she drops it. She clenches her hands in her lap. Ursa was alive when she sent the letters. She could still be.

Azula allows herself to fully process the statement the way the doctors recommend.

Their mother is in Hira'a and never contacted them. Fine. Azula can understand why she never contacted her. But Zuko? Their mother _loved_ Zuko. Is this what love is? Selfish? Fickle? Did Ursa only love Zuko as long as it served her do so?

Azula’s lip curls. It doesn’t sound like Ursa but then, Azula has been wrong before.

 _Is this it?_ Azula thinks hysterically. _Did I really just find the evidence that our mother is alive? Is this where she has been all this time, on a tiny little volcanic island hardly fit to hold the former Fire Lady and mother of the nation?_

Azula doesn’t tell Zuko. She can’t. She closes the box and resolves to hide this from him as long as possible. Just until he can handle the news. Things are fragile enough as it is. He protected her for so long. It should be her turn to protect him from this.

He finds out anyway, because of course he does, because all her servants are useless traitors who seem to think that regular contact with Zuko is necessary for her mental health. He knocks gingerly on the door while the servants scuttle around him.

“Azula?” he calls gently. “May I enter?”

He’s the _regent,_ he doesn’t have to ask for permission. Idiot. She yanks open the door and glares in his face, then pulls him inside before the servants can catch a glimpse of her and start _gossiping,_ Agni forbid.

They sit on her ridiculously oversized bed that Azula, unfortunately, loves and would betray Ozai all over again for if it meant that she never had to sleep without it again. Zuko brings pistachio nuts from the kitchen that do not feel dry like the ones they ate on the run, and she wonders if it is a Fire Nation thing or a not-being-in-poverty thing. There is a sweet, almost creamy tart of some sort to pair with it and the custard drips onto the bed sheets as Azula bites into it. Oh well. It feels nice to eat again. After the coup, everything tasted like ash on her tongue.

Her stomach churns with the discovery of her mother's letters, but she still manages to eat. Zuko calls it progress. _And it is,_ Azula supposes. Food is nice. 

Zuko, still in his ceremonial robes and hair bearing the regent crown the Fire Sages had to hastily retrieve from the archives, mindlessly eats his own tarts with his fingers. He sits cross-legged on her bed.

“Here’s the thing,” Azula finally explains once the food is finished. She frowns at the empty tray. “I think mother’s alive.”

Zuko laughs. Then, eyes widening, he takes in Azula’s expression.

“Oh,” he says. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Am I ever?” Azula tosses her hair. “I found letters in her room dating after her departure, from _Hira'a ,_ would you believe it? Letters to someone in the palace. I couldn’t see because the names were blacked out. I think she’s alive.”

There is a knock on the door. After a slight hesitation, the servant opens the door a crack and slides another tray of food underneath. Azula brightens. Maybe not all her servants are useless.

A court lady made a polite suggestion that _you should really stop eating so much, Princess Azula._ You won’t be able to fit your robes if you keep eating and you will have to be measured for new ones.

 _"_ Then make new ones," Azula retorted.

It’s- _fine,_ the comments about her weight. It’s fine. Azula was always active with training and running across the nation on errands, and between that and her firebending and being a teenager, she never worried about her weight. Then she stopped eating after the coup. It is only recently that food regained its flavour, and she began eating again.

The palace was suddenly full of whispers that she was gaining weight. Like it was a _bad thing,_ and Azula hadn’t been somewhat underweight in her teens due to constant training and not enough food, like she hadn’t dropped weight after the coup. This is probably the healthiest she has ever been and all they can talk about is that she looks heavier than normal.

Zuko discourages the gossip and insists she eat in whatever way makes her comfortable and shows a rare flash of steel as he strongarms the cooks into providing Azula with her daily cravings. If he finds out anyone in the staff has denied her food on anything other than the basis of _we literally do not have that available right now,_ he gets angry like you wouldn’t believe. It is the only thing he ever gets mad at the servants for. They could pour soup in his lap and _he_ would apologise to _them._

It is likely why they love him so much.

Zuko sighs heavily, hand resting in his lap like he can’t bear to move it. Azula neatly drops another tart into his hand then settles back into her own spot.

“What do you think?” she asks, watching carefully for his reaction. “About the letter?”

“I think mother’s alive,” he replies quietly, looking down. “It would make sense. But why didn’t she come back for us?”

Azula wonders too.

“Forget about that,” she demands. She wriggles closer to him. “Let’s focus on the facts. Mother is alive, and in Hira'a. What do you want to do?”

“Find her,” Zuko admits. He sets the tart aside. “But my duties-“

“You’re the _regent,_ Zuko,” Azula scoffs. “You’re not the Fire Lord. That’s me, remember? And I say we go to Hira'a.”

“The court would never approve.”

Azula smiles, and Zuko smiles with her. The good thing about her breakdown is that no one expects anything from her now. She doesn’t have to follow etiquette because they count it as a miracle she didn’t go insane like Ozai, or try and kill Zuko. They think she lost all her potential, all her ambition and cunning the night of the coup, as though those are things that can be abandoned or burned out of someone. The coup was not Azula’s final stone toss. She is only getting started.

“The court doesn’t have to know,” Azula says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was lowkey very worried about posting this even though i edited properly and got my thoughts into order. the anxiety of starting a new fic, i guess? especially when it's a sequel lol.  
> if you're reading this after the first work, then wow. you're really invested in this to endure over 100K and come back for more. some people weren't expecting a sequel and many were happy that there is one, but lemme tell you that i had a sequel planned waaaay before anyone expressed interest. now i'm here with another fic for y'all! when i asked originally, most of you wanted to see the actual post-war throne struggles in a separate fic, so that's what this is, and also dealing with the Ursa side of things because that was potential completely untapped by The Search. i still haven't read it by the way so don't @ me when i diverge from canon. i make my own, thanks. <333


	2. crescent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> crescent - only half of the moon is illuminated.

Azula watches Zuko slip past the guards, swords strung over his back despite the lack of need for them anymore. She thinks back to when Zuko helped her escape from the palace, fleeing charges of treason. He has always tried helping her. Even when she didn’t realise.

Their mother is in Hira’a. Azula could go her entire life without ever seeing her mother again. What did Ursa ever do for her except leave? Azula has no desire to see the mother who abandoned her.

But Zuko is another story. He always loved Ursa, and she loved him in return. He would know the names of the turtleducks. He probably helped name them. Azula is trying not to be resentful of Zuko anymore. It isn’t either of their fault that Ursa cherry picked her affections, the same way that Ozai did. Zuko couldn’t have controlled that. How can she blame him?

She knows that Ursa’s departure left a void in Zuko. A mother-shaped space he tried to fill with anger. Azula doesn’t understand how he feels. She can’t. But she knows that she could never look Zuko in the eye if she doesn’t help him with this, his one last chance at seeing their mother again. It’s what he needs. Even if he doesn’t realise.

Zuko clears the way and Azula trails behind, chin upturned imperiously. There is no need for them to sneak around in their own palace. She is the Fire Lord, and she will not hide.

Zuko rolls his eyes and takes her hand.

“Let’s go,” he says. She smiles at the hint of anxiety in his voice.

Hira’a can only be reached by air or sea. They hover momentarily by the war balloons, but it feels too similar to the events of the past year for her liking. Zuko notices.

“We can take two komodo-rhinos,” he suggests, shading his eyes against the setting sun. “It’s only a few hours from Caldera. There’s a ferry that can take us from the mainland to Hira’a.”

He doesn’t suggest walking. He knows Azula would have refused.

Moments like these make Azula realise how little they truly knew each other before. They were strangers occupying the same space, but their lives were almost separate. Especially after Zuko’s exile. Out of sight, out of mind. Azula always claimed she didn’t have a brother.

“Let’s take the komodo-rhinos,” she says, and twirls her hair. “After you, Fire Lord _Regent._ ”

Her tone is mocking but Zuko rolls his eyes instead of reacting. They have passed the point of needless insecurities. If Azula’s comments bothered Zuko, she trusts that he would tell her now. It’s difficult, adjusting to a life without her father. He was horrible. She is glad that he is gone. But sometimes, her old doubts start creeping, and acid seeps into her words without realising. Nothing is the same. Neither is Azula. Pretending to mock Zuko at least lets her pretend that she is even remotely close to who she used to be.

Azula knows her progress has been for the better. She is happier than she used to be. Closer to Zuko and closer to friendship with Toph and Suki, and even Katara when they can stand to talk to each other.

 _Change takes time,_ is what Zuko says. It’s okay that she relapses and slips into old habits.

Zuko’s swords stay sheathed as he quietly burns through the lock on the stable doors. He slides inside, Azula following closely on his heels and nearly tripping over his robes. Zuko pauses to glare at her.

“What?” she asks, far too loud. It echoes in the empty stables. She scoffs. “Zuko, you’re the regent. I’m the _Fire Lord._ No one will stop us.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of.” Zuko grimaces. “Imagine if one of the ministers catches us. Or the Fire Sages.”

Azula considers this then pushes past Zuko. “Move _faster,_ brother. If I have to hear one more condescending speech then I will set someone on fire, and even _you_ can’t fix the damage from that.”

“I’m not the Avatar,” Zuko sighs as they survey their options. “I don’t have spiritual powers.”

“You stopped Advisor Cheong from petitioning for my abdication.”

“That? He was just causing a fuss to try and irritate me into making a mistake. It was my dethronement he wanted, not yours.” Zuko turns his head sideways, eyes nearly glowing in the dark. Eerily feline. “Trust me, Azula. They want you on the throne more than me. You don’t have anything to worry about there.”

“True.”

It is. For all that they praised Azula originally, they were delighted when she fell. They want Azula on the throne not for her ambition or her intelligence. They simply want Zuko out of the way, where he cannot continue calling for peace and cooperation. They think Azula will be an easy target now. Weak, without Ozai’s influence.

Azula is not used to being underestimated. That is Zuko’s domain, and always will be. But like Suki said, there is potential in having no expectations upon you. Azula has never experienced it before. Maybe it is time she truly took advantage.

She kicks open the stable door. Zuko startles, a silent twitch of his shoulders that quickly stills. She points at the komodo-rhino inside, staring mulishly at the siblings.

“Pick this one.” Azula grins, showing her teeth. “I think it will suit you.”

Zuko’s expression is appropriately terrified. He picks it anyway.

Azula takes the lead on the way out of the palace. She doesn’t particularly care who sees them, Zuko’s stealth be damned. He complains loudly beside her that they should really be leaving through the back doors lest they upset someone, but Azula stopped giving a damn after they first wrote her off.

Privately, she sympathises with Zuko. Her hands move nervously along the reigns.

She spent years moulding herself to the perfect daughter. Training to the point of collapse, studying into the night, attending meetings and ceremonies and parades. Her father stands over her shoulder, watching for mistakes.

But no one expects that of her anymore. Her role, now, is to be the loose cannon. The prodigy fallen from grace. She can play this role to get Zuko to Ursa. It is the least she can do for him.

“Where’s the fun in that?” she tells Zuko. “Go big or go home, Toph would say.”

He laughs. Azula clicks her tongue and increases their pace, before any of the dozen servants watching their exit actually decide to stop them instead of acting as passive spies.

They pull their hoods down once they have left the palace. The crowds part for the komodo-rhinos, but Zuko sinks into his saddle. Azula rolls her eyes and grabs onto his reigns, urging his komodo-rhino forward. It is a stubborn, mulish thing that will give Zuko endless trouble and Azula endless amusement. She loves being Fire Lord.

The streets are bustling, filled with frying spices and vendors loudly calling out their deals.

“Best prices in Caldera! Buy now before it's gone!"

Azula shakes her head. She doesn’t understand its utility. People will buy or they will not. There is no point in manipulating them into making purchases.

Their journey out of Caldera is nothing its predecessor. Zuko sways unsteadily in the saddle, but they are side by side and neither are glaring or suspicious. Instead, they have both hidden their crowns and exchanged their topknots for braids. There is no shame, Azula now knows. Her hair is not indicative of her honour.

There are no guards chasing them, and Azula cannot predict why. Respect for their decision? No. Most likely, the ministers think they can use their absence as an advantage. Azula sighs loudly at the thought of the headache that will cause for Zuko upon their return. _Zuko,_ because Azula doesn’t have to process the paperwork. One of the many benefits to naming him regent.

The war ended a year ago. The peace is not so fragile that a few scheming ministers can unravel it in a matter of weeks. Azula knows Mai and Ty Lee would personally burn the palace to the ground before letting that happen.

Azula stares at the passing road as she thinks of Mai and Ty Lee. They moved to Kyoshi after the war. Ty Lee wanted to try her hand at the warrior’s craft, following after Suki. Azula feels uneasy at the thought of them forming a trio. She trusts Suki, but Mai and Ty Lee were there for Azula’s worst rages, her most profound insecurities. Now they are abroad where Azula cannot see nor hear them.

It is, perhaps, the best move for all their sakes. Azula no longer feels hatred stirring in her heart, but she cannot hide the miserable twinge when she remembers Ty Lee’s fingers striking expertly at Azula’s throat, and Mai’s apathetic gaze. They will never be what they were. Someday, if they wish, they could become acquaintances again. But that will be a long time coming.

Mai followed Ty Lee because she despised the idea of staying in Caldera with her family and Azula, and because she loves Ty Lee. It took an embarrassingly long time for Azula to realise the truth of their relationship. _Zuko_ figured it out before her. Her only defence is that Mai and Ty Lee were amiable, but never friends. They wavered in each other’s presence with eyes searching for weakness. Ty Lee was vapid and Mai was emotionless, and that was their view of each other right until Azula stupidly forced them to work together. Ozai sealed the bond. Now they send Zuko letters that make him smile, and Azula’s desk remains infuriatingly empty.

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t. They helped her with the invasion and cheered at her coronation, but they aren’t friends anymore. That’s fine.

Azula looks over at Zuko. His face is surprisingly calm, considering his inexperience with komodo-rhinos. She knows he has ridden them before in his chase for the Avatar, but he spent most of those years at sea, not land. His hesitation is evident in every move of his hands.

That is Zuko. Never outwardly showing fear and pretending that every challenge, every insult, is bearable.

She knows what they say of him. The weak Avatar defender, a traitor without honour. Too useless to take the throne himself, instead hiding in his sister's former glory. Outside of the palace, the elite insist Azula should have no regent. They spent years cultivating favour with the royal family, and Zuko was naturally exempt. Sound of mind or not, they want Azula alone.

Zuko has an explosive temper. Always has. She saw flashes when they were travelling together - Zuko kicking at trees and screaming at the sky, overturning crates when a guard challenged them. But his temper runs lethal. It rages quietly, seething between his teeth as it waits for the right opportunity. 

Azula asked him if that is what he was doing, with the rumours. Waiting for the right opportunity to end them. _Permanently._

Zuko only sighed, dark circles under his eyes and hair in disarray. His robes were crinkled from sleeping at his desk. 

Zuko thinks that there is nothing that cannot be endured, so long as you are alive. Azula thinks that there are some things you shouldn't have to. There is no honour in suffering. Only suffering for its own sake. He is punishing himself for not being the Fire Lord they want, but he has not heard what the people say. Azula has listened to her maid’s whispers. Zuko confuses the people. Azula holds the position but Zuko holds the power. While Azula knows that Zuko has his own plans, he defers to Azula.

“It’s your crown,” he says, a bitter but resigned quirk to his lips. It soon became teasing. Depending on who you ask, Zuko is either a helpless puppet to Azula, or the true Fire Lord. Azula thinks differently. When she sees Zuko, she sees-

Her brother. A partner in this mess called leadership _,_ and _dragging your country out of a war because really now, this has gone on far too long with far too little gain._

Zuko calls it dragging themselves out of the war to build a nation of peace. Azula’s words work better with the ministers. Zuko’s work better on the people.

They are a team, and the throne remains an uncertain thing, teetering between the two of them, but Azula would rather drive a knife through her heart than suspect Zuko of treason. Besides, she knows Zuko. He doesn’t have the stomach for betrayal.

Their travel to Hira’a is largely uneventful. Azula’s sleep is still disturbed. She can see the concern in Zuko’s eyes, but he keeps silent. They know not to speak of their shared night terrors. Zuko practices swords or katas when he cannot sleep, but sometimes he sneaks up to the roof to read theatre scrolls when he thinks she will not notice. Azula doesn’t care about his theatre scrolls. She made her peace with his swords. She can make peace with Zuko’s other hobbies. One of them has to have _some_ modicum of fun, after all.

Toph informed them through a little that they were both too serious already, even without the weight of the throne.

“Playing around occasionally may make your leadership more… _palatable,_ ” an advisor suggested uncertainly, hands folded together. “To the servants.”

“It’ll make you seem more like children,” a maid revealed bluntly. She hoisted the laundry basket higher, speaking directly to Zuko and not Azula, who was supposed to be sleeping. Everyone knew she was not. “They want to use it as an excuse to get rid of both of you and bring in Iroh, or their own figure.”

Azula snorted from bed. She isn’t an idiot. Everyone knows that.

The maid glanced at her, sighed, and bowed to both of them as she exited. Azula’s instincts urged her to call the maid back and discipline her for the disrespect. She looked instead to Zuko, who waved it off with a contemplative expression.

“If they tease you or skip protocol from time to time,” he explains slowly, pulling the covers back over Azula before she could protest. “It means they trust that you won’t punish them for the smallest of mistakes. It means they respect you as a person.” Then he hesitated, eyebrows drawing together. “… Right?”

Azula had no answer. She still doesn’t. All she has ever known is control through fear. Her maids ignore her requests to be left alone and bring her Zuko with trays of desserts, and leave cups of tea by her desk when she screams that she _doesn’t need tea, leave me alone!_

Is that respect? Is that affection? Or simply another mark of the people’s intolerance for Zuko and Azula?

They finally arrive in Hira’a nearly six hours after they initially departed. No one has crashed their journey to demand they return, so Azula assumes they are safe. She should send a note to the Kyoshi Warriors, asking for a diplomatic visit. Suki will keep the ministers in line during their absence.

_(As will Mai and Ty Lee.)_

Hira'a is exactly as Azula imagined. Resources long bled dry, the island seems to hunch in on itself. The ferry deposits them at the docks and Azula and Zuko look at each other. Zuko picks up their luggage without comment, and they slowly make their way to the markets. Experience tells them that they will find who they need there.

Azula asks a passing fish merchant who the gossip of the town is. He shakes his head profusely and laughs off her words, but stops dead at Azula's expression. He points, wordlessly, to an old woman sitting by a bundle of straw. She deftly weaves hats with one eye on a conversing couple. 

"Her?" Zuko responds doubtfully. He adjusts his grip on their bags. "Shouldn't we find someone else? Like a guard or headman?"

"What do you think?" Azula watches him settle into contemplation. "When you were searching for the Avatar, who was most helpful?"

She tactfully refrains from pointing out that three years of searching didn't reveal the location of the Avatar, nor any pertinent information. Azula knows how to twist words until they bleed, but she also knows when it would be inappropriate. 

"People," Zuko says finally. He nods towards the woman, now determined. "The maps and records and things, that all came from higher ups. But the information that actually led me places? It came from people."

"Let's go then," Azula says simply.

They approach the woman and try not to seem suspicious. Zuko draws his cloak across his face self-consciously, trying to hide the distinctive scar. The woman continues weaving, and Azula soon grows tiring of waiting for her. Azula coughs loudly. The woman looks up, a reproach rising to her lips for disrespectful youth. Zuko seizes the opportunity for earnest investigation. 

“Do you know Ursa?” Zuko asks hesitantly. He lingers, unsure of his welcome.

The old woman sighs in exaggerated frustration. "I'm busy, you know. I have weaving to do, and I'm not getting any younger."

"Sorry," Zuko apologises reflexively. Azula pinches him.

 _What?_ he mouths back, rubbing his arm with an injured expression.

The woman peers at Zuko's face while he is distracted. Azula can see realisation on the cusp of dawning.

"Ursa, you asked for?" The woman scratches at her head. Her eyes are sharp, despite her wandering demeanour. "What exactly are you asking?"

“What can you tell us about Ursa?” Azula interjects. She folds her arms. “Where she lives?”

Her tone is too sharp. She knows it the instant she opens her mouth, the woman’s face hardening.

“And what would your business with her be?”

Azula scoffs and looks away. The woman suddenly exclaims.

“Oh! You look just like Ursa. Are you here for the funeral? That happened months ago, child. News travels slow from here to the colonies.” The woman leans closer, suddenly warm to the two strangers. “Equally slow to Caldera, too.”

Azula nearly snaps at the woman. She looks like Ursa? Even in the palace, no one ever said such a thing to her. 

“Funeral?” Zuko’s eyes widen sharply.

She waves him away. “Oh, Ursa is still alive. No need to worry.”

“We’re her children.” Zuko gives in and moves closer to the woman, expression earnest and pleading. “Zuko and Azula. Please, we just want to talk to her.”

The woman thinks carefully. “I can tell you where Ursa is,” she says slowly. “although I can’t say if you will be welcome. Funny woman, that Ursa. She was always a lovely child. Then she went away and won’t say a word to anyone.”

Azula looks at Zuko. He is already looking back at her. She expects to find disappointment, but there is only determination scrawled across his features.

“She’ll talk to us,” Zuko confirms, confident. He gently catches the woman’s attention. “Please. This could be our only chance to see her again.”

“Alright,” the woman sighs. She gingerly rises to her feet using a walker that looks older than her. She catches Azula’s eye. “The walker was my husband’s, before he passed. It was his father’s before him. We value family, in this town. I won’t deprive you of it.”

She whispers them Ursa’s house. Zuko beams, and she sighs.

“Everyone knows where Ursa lives, of course. It’s no secret. But don’t go telling people you’re looking for Ursa, you hear me? There are funny rumours about her. It’ll do no one any good.”

Zuko gives his word. After a moment and a long, judging silence, Azula gives hers too. The woman points towards the edge of town.

“Her family was wealthy, when they lived here,” she sighs. “Good people. Always a little strange, though. It’s a shame to see them go.”

Azula’s mind is already elsewhere. She tugs at Zuko’s arm.

“Zuzu, let’s _go._ ”

He bows politely to the woman, hand over fist. “Thank you for your help. We won’t forget this.”

Azula doesn’t expect much. Hira’a was always a poor island, even when Avatar Roku resided here years ago. She wonders if Zuko realises they are standing on the home of a former Avatar.

The road is dirt and the houses are all made of either imported wood, or mud bricks. Azula cannot imagine her mother living in mud. She cannot imagine her anywhere other than the palace, long robes and dignified pace. Mother always cared about court etiquette and decorum. Life as a peasant could no longer be satisfying.

They reach the door. It is an ordinary house. A small, gated fence leading to a backyard. A door without a knocker. They may have been wealthy by the standards of Hira’a, but this is hardly the house of an elite family like the woman said.

Azula slowly draws back as Zuko nears the door. Her heart hammers in her chest. Her mother could be inside. The mother who abandoned her without so much as a note and left her to rot under Ozai’s influence. Her mother _left her._ Wrote her off as a monster. Azula is Fire Lord now and leading peace negotiations, has friends of her own, doesn’t chase after pigeon-doves or push other children over just to see them cry. She is a person of her own. Not the caricature her parents carved in her image.

Will her mother scream when she sees Azula? Will she slam the door in their faces? Will she turn to stone and block their entrance?

Azula’s hands feel clammy. She wipes them against the backs of her robes and takes a step backwards, followed by another, then another. She doesn’t want to see Ursa. Her long-lost mother is _right there,_ just on the other side of the door, and Azula can feel is the urge to throw up.

Ozai is imprisoned now. Azula hasn’t seen him, kept away under Zuko’s orders lest it upset her mental health. She imagines him in a dark cell with only a high window, far from reach. She can see his face turning towards the pale strips of sunlight and aching for his lost connection to Agni. She hates him. She loved him. She furiously wishes that her mother had never left. If she had stayed, they could be a family. Maybe Ursa could have stopped father from training Azula so badly that she cried, silently, under the covers of her bed at night. Maybe she could have stopped Zuko’s exile. Ozai wouldn’t love them, would never love them, and Azula has accepted that, but maybe things wouldn’t have been as bad if only Ursa had _stayed._

All Azula can think is that even her mother didn’t love her enough. Azula has always had people’s fear. Their praise. But she has never in her life been loved before she was feared, and her mother is not exempt. The one person who should adore her more than anything.

“I might throw up,” she admits delicately to Zuko. She sits on the gravel pathway.

Zuko turns back to look at her. She cannot read the expression on his face. For a long moment, she thinks he might tell her to leave. That her presence will ruin his reunion with Ursa. That Azula has no place here.

He sits next to her.

“Me too,” he says quietly. Then he smiles, crooked and awkward and infuriatingly comforting. They nurse the silence between them.

“I don’t know if I want to see her,” Azula says. She tilts her head to look at the sky rather than that damnable door. “I really don’t. I _should._ I know I should.”

Zuko shrugs. His swords clink against the gravel.

“It’s understandable. Neither of us have seen mother for years. We aren’t who she last knew us as.”

“You want to see her though.”

“I do.” Zuko’s expression clears, and longing shines through. His eyes drift to the door. “She’s- I haven’t seen her since I was a kid. A lot of the time, I thought she was the only person in the palace who understood me.”

It shouldn’t hurt to hear. They weren’t siblings, back then. They were enemies. Even when Ursa was around and Azula was still permitted to drag Zuko into her games as a target, each were watched carefully.

 _You may have to compete against one another someday,_ the courtiers said after Lu Ten was sent to the front in Ba Sing Se. Azula immediately understood. Zuko did not.

Azula played with Zuko, but it was to make him a fool in front of her friends, raising Azula higher. She wanted to seem strong. Talented. She didn’t want anyone to perceive any flaws in herself, even at a young age, and she used Zuko’s hesitations and temper against him. Of course he bonded with mother. Azula wasn’t close with Zuko in those days.

“You’re upset,” he notes, surprise colouring his voice. He recovers quickly and shoves playfully at her shoulder. “We’re close now, Azula. That’s what matters.”

Azula rocks with the force and scowls, but indulges Zuko’s awkward attempts at affection. He writes to Sokka sometimes. Sokka offers advice on bonding with younger sisters. Azula has read the letters and dismissed it as sentimental, foolish garbage, but Zuko seems to be trying to emulate Sokka’s casualty. Azula doesn’t know how to tell Zuko that she doesn’t need a brother like Sokka. She wants her own brother. He is doing fine without Sokka’s half-joking advice.

She should walk to the door with Zuko. Whether mother hates her or wants her gone, Zuko will ensure she stays. He will not banish Azula from their sight. Seeing mother again will not remove her from Zuko’s affections. Azula knows her thoughts are illogical, but she struggles to battle her clouded emotions.

 _Longing_ was written on Zuko’s face. Azula turns her gaze inward. Maybe that is what she is feeling. Longing for a mother that never stayed and a childhood never lived. Or maybe longing for an exit from this nightmare reunion.

In the end, neither Zuko nor Azula have to decide on whether to knock on the door. It opens of its own accord.

Their mother’s face stares outwards, startled and pale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't have the strength inside me to write another roadtrip so i zoomed past the actual travel bits lol. sorry to anyone who wanted more build-up!  
> i'm writing two post-war fics at the same time so my wires are slowly getting crossed as well. i actually did edit this chapter mostly but there may be a few mistakes in some of the sections i wrote just before posting, so feel free to point stuff out!  
> i hope this was worth the wait <3


	3. waning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ursa comes face to face with her children. Azula looks back upon the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> waning - decreasing amount of light, moving towards a new moon.

Ursa’s eyes flicker between the two. They pass over Azula then come to rest on Zuko. Her lips part silently, and her voice seems to fail her. Then she sags against the doorway, as if all the energy was drained from her in one sudden blow.

“ _Zuko?”_

“That’s me,” Zuko says, voice cracking, and Azula would make fun of him for it but she finds her own words lodged in her throat.

She hates her mother. She stares at her through burning eyes, raking in the sight of the mother long lost to her.

Ursa is older than she remembers. Plain-clothed, her hair in a simple bun and no hair pin in sight. There are wrinkles by her eyes. Holding onto the door frame for support, she looks nothing like the mother who left them behind. Azula’s hatred bubble and overflows, pooling beneath her. Slick on her hands like blood.

Ursa makes a sound like a wounded animal at Zuko’s voice. She claws at her throat, half choking. Zuko remains frozen in place. Paralysed. Azula tries to move her own hands but it is like wading through molasses. She watches her mother struggle to cry. Ursa wants to. Azula can tell. She spent years learning to read people. But no matter how much Ursa’s face scrunches and contorts, her furiously wobbling lips refuse to release her anguish. Her eyes glisten but no tears escape.

Azula brushes the moisture from her own eyes. There is no place for it here. She hates her mother.

After an eternity, Ursa straightens. She makes a gesture like she wants to reach for Zuko but doesn’t.

“Come inside,” she says. “Before the neighbours see.”

Zuko latches onto Azula’s arm, solid but somehow still so fragile in her eyes, and together they step inside.

Ursa guides them directly to the living room. She potters around, closing curtains and latching doors shut. Azula catches a glimpse of a flowering garden before the curtains stretch wide. Of course her mother would continue gardening. She loved the gardens more than anything.

Azula’s lip curls bitterly. She makes no move to hide it. Ursa’s eyes go to her face, then dart away. She ducks her head. Guilty.

“Sit, sit,” Ursa ushers quietly. She doesn’t stop moving. Pulling a teapot and setting the water to boil, fetching the leaves and cups. Zuko stands to help her. Azula stops him.

“She wants time to collect herself,” she explains, more gently than she thought she could manage. Azula can feel the poison collecting on her tongue. Her heart beats a quick one-two staccato that thrums inside her chest. She can feel her blood pumping. Static crowds her ears. She clenches her fists and tells herself to calm down. She cannot ruin this for Zuko.

Her mother returns with the tea and places it in the centre of the beaten wooden table. It is well-carved, Azula notes unthinkingly. It was probably once worth a great deal of money. Then she turns her head to Zuko so she doesn’t have to focus on her mother.

Zuko falters. “We came,” he tries recounting slowly, stammering and repeating words. “We came to see you. We found letters. In your old chambers.”

“Ah.” Ursa’s hands fiddle with the teacup despite having avoided drinking from it. Her mouth works around the words. “In the box under my bed? I would have thought they destroyed them.”

“How did you know where they were?” Azula’s voice lashes through the air and Ursa flinches. She looks down. This is Azula being a monster. This is Azula-

Backing off under Zuko’s pitiful gaze. She leans back in her seat and scoffs.

Ursa gestures vaguely to the table. “They told me,” she says. “Where they kept them. In case I ever returned and wanted them destroyed.”

“And you didn’t.” It is Zuko, not Azula, that makes the comment. He frowns, but there is no malice. It reads as merely contemplative. “You left. We thought you were dead.”

“No,” Ursa sighs quietly. She seems torn between looking down or keeping her eyes on her son. “I had to leave. But I was still alive.”

Azula rocks backwards in the chair. Her posture stiffens and she fights the urge to smooth down her hair. Her mother isn’t watching. She doesn’t care.

“You didn’t say goodbye,” Azula says plaintively. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t bring it up. She kicks herself for it now. Ursa never once looked back. She obviously didn’t care for the monster she was leaving behind. Azula's comment only betrays weakness.

Ursa's smile is small. She can hardly look Azula in the eye. Ursa seems to think Azula the ghost of her past, not Zuko. Azula digs her nails into her palms.

“I’m sorry.” Ursa finally looks down, bowing her head. The tears come, then. She cries with shaking, stifled sobs, clearly trying not to be obvious in front of them. It nearly works. Had Azula not been looking for it, she would think Ursa laughing instead.

Ursa cries soundlessly. It feels practiced. There is only one way a person learns to cry without noise, and that is through experience.

Her mother is pitiful. Azula watches and watches and feels something burn inside her chest. Why is Ursa the victim here? Why is she acting like their return tore something from her? She's their _mother._ She should be crying with joy, and shouting to the entire world that her children are finally back. This is _Azula's_ moment. Zuko's moment. Not Ursa's - not again. 

“Are you okay?” Zuko asks quietly, because Zuko is a better person than Azula.

“I’m fine.” Ursa straightens and wipes her face. She delicately folds her handkerchief, a little of her old grace bleeding through. “I’m sorry, I’m a mess. I heard Azula is Fire Lord now…?” she trails off.

“I am,” Azula confirms. She folds her arms. “I made Zuko regent.”

Ursa smiles. Jealousy tugs at Azula’s gut. Ursa thinks through her question carefully, considerations rattling through her head. Clearly, Ursa remembers what it was like to live in the palace. There are always areas of non-discussion. Particularly when it comes to a freshly coronated Fire Lord. Ursa is weighing her chances and deciding on a safe topic.

She doesn’t mention Ozai.

“Are your chambers bigger now?” Ursa finally takes a sip of her tea. Her gaze roams over her two children. “I would imagine it is much more comfortable now.”

“Anything is comfortable after living on a ship for three years,” Zuko jokes, and Azula nearly throws her tea at him so he _shuts up._

Ursa’s face falls. She stares at Zuko’s scar, the firebrand red that covers half his face, like ink spreading across paper. Azula was there when it happened. She hates that she laughed, like the whole situation was a joke, like she wasn’t about to lose the only person in the palace who still loved her. She didn’t even realise. Azula took Zuko for granted. She thought of the bubbling flesh as a victory for her father.

Azula still hears the screams, sometimes. And now Ursa will too – in her head, in her dreams, Zuko’s scar playing behind her eyes when she tries to sleep. She should have been there. Dear Agni, Ursa should have _been there._

There is so much to talk about. Those six lost years weigh them down. Azula wants to scream at her mother, wants to demand answers, wants to tell her in excruciating detail what happened after she left. What have they discussed so far except small talk? Meaningless details and chamber sizes?

What are they afraid of? That if they puncture the bubble, break the spell, then the other party will vanish again?

The tension slowly builds, stretching like sugar candy.

“Can I hug you?” Ursa’s voice wavers, then strengthens. Her eyes are determined. This is not the mother she remembers, but neither Zuko nor Azula are the person she remembers either. Azula looks at her mother and sees overlapping layers, like sketches. Who she was, and who she is. Ursa's mannerisms have weakened outside the palace, but there is still a proud tilt to her chin when she faces them. The old mixed with the new. 

Zuko nods. Then he looks at Azula, who rolls her eyes. She doesn’t expect Ursa to be serious. If anything, she will hug Zuko alone. It catches Azula off guard when Ursa engulfs them both in a hug, her arms worryingly thin. Azula can feel the bones. She stands stock-still, trying to parse the thought that her mother is _hugging her._

Ursa trembles as she hugs them. Unease builds in Azula’s chest. Her mother never hugged her. Only put a hand on her back when her posture needed correction or grabbed her by the wrists to stop her from blasting fire at the turtleducks. After all these years, why is Ursa only now deciding to hug her only daughter?

Her temper flares. Azula pushes her away and takes a step back, fists clenched ready to make flames. Zuko spots the position of her feet- the opening stance to a particularly aggressive kata- and tugs at her sleeve as a reminder.

Best behaviour. Azula breathes out fire _(thank you for that little trick, Zuko)_ and waits for her mother to flinch. She doesn’t. Azula isn’t sure if that means she is more or less wary of Azula now.

Azula grabs the satchel from the floor and pushes it into Zuko’s chest, storming outside. Undignified, for a lady. Ursa would have called her out on it if she still lived at the palace. She doesn’t care anymore. Never did, or she would have hugged Azula and read her bedtime stories like she did for Zuko and pretended otherwise when Azula asked her about it.

She shoots jets of blue flame high into the air, screaming to release her pent-up anger. Maybe Zuko was onto to something with his screaming phase. It certainly makes her feel better to yell and set things on fire, so she does. She burns down the gates to her mother’s property and scorches the ground and burns up the fire-lilies her mother was always so fond of.

 _(“Azula!” she scolded, voice dark and thunderous. “We do_ not _burn flowers in this family.”)_

No one says a word to stop her. Zuko isn’t even watching. She can see him through the windows. He is calmly sipping his tea and distracting their mother from her raging in the garden.

A year ago, she would have thought he was trying to sabotage her. Now she accepts it as Zuko’s stupidly devoted affection. Letting Azula cry and rage in privacy, turning their mother’s eyes aside so no one will see Azula so vulnerable.

Ursa saw anyway. Azula knows she did. Yet she is not running outside in her robes, poised as ever and walking with quick, tiny steps to create an elegant gate and avoid disturbing her hair ornament. Because she is a peasant now. Because she wears a tunic now. Because she lives in _Hira’a,_ of all places, and is content to let her daughter destroy her lilies.

Azula finally collapses in the garden, soil clinging to her robes. Why couldn’t she have had that mother? Why couldn’t Ursa have been this accepting and loving when Azula needed it? Then maybe she wouldn’t be like this- this _monster,_ this creature trapped in constricting skin that chokes and burns her. Her own mother couldn’t love her. She thought no one else ever could.

She goes back inside.

“Why?” she chokes out, interrupting their conversation. Ursa doesn't understand. Azula knows she doesn't. But Ursa marshals her thoughts and tries to find an answer to Azula's unspoken question. 

Her eyes go distant. “I struggled, in the palace. I was forced to marry a man I didn’t love. I had no allies or friends. Zuko was Ozai’s heir, and they kept him from me in the beginning. I had hoped, when you were born Azula, that you would be the child I was allowed to hold close. That we could keep each other company.” Ursa pauses, lost in memory. “I was wrong. They took you from me too. But it was never your job to help me, Azula. It was unfair for me to push all my hopes onto you. I simply didn’t know how to handle a child like you.”

 _A child like you._ What, loud? Confident? What made Azula so different to Zuko? Sure, she was violent and more ruthless than Zuko, even as a child, but what made her so inherently _bad_ while Zuko was the good child in Ursa’s eyes? What lead to that decision?

She says the last part aloud. Ursa grimaces, then recovers with a sip of her tea.

“I suppose I had listened too much to other ladies in the palace. Wives of officials. They all said how lovely it was to have a daughter, how lively their house felt now that they had a daughter who wasn’t constantly in lessons like their sons. Whom they could talk to and embroider with. I was lonely, and so desperate for what they described that I lost myself in my fantasy. I wasn’t prepared for a daughter as determined as you, who practiced calligraphy until sundown and told me it was to prepare for writing military reports.” She smiles. The corners of her eyes crinkle. “My little spitfire.”

Azula hurls the teacup at the wall behind Ursa and Zuko has to wrestle her away from the table. _Spitfire._ How _dare_ her mother throw that out so casually, her old nickname before Ursa discarded her, started seeing her as _dangerous_ rather than _passionate_ , decided she was no good, a useless daughter, a worthless daughter. _How dare she._

“I’m so sorry,” Zuko tells Ursa, uselessly. Polite like they aren’t related by blood. Azula screams and thrashes in his grasp and he moves them towards the door. “We’ll come back later. This just isn’t a good time. I swear we’ll be back before sundown, don’t worry Ursa-“

“Call me mom,” she interjects, then continues looking concerned for Azula. “Is she-“

“She’s fine,” Zuko says. Azula sets his sleeve on fire. He looks Ursa in the eye without flinching. “This happens all the time.”

It does. It’s practically part of their routine, by now. They both know Azula would never really harm Zuko. It just helps her feel in control to think that she can. After all, they both know there is a reason that magnolias were banned from the palace after half their officials became mysteriously terrified of the flower seemingly overnight. Really, she thought they had thicker skin that that. One little threat and suddenly they think she really is going to make a poison out of it.

Idiots. Magnolias aren’t poisonous. If they were then she would have them growing in her quarters of the palace but she _isn’t._ And Zuko would have banned them long before that. Something about limiting possibilities.

Zuzu worries. He always does.

He turns his palms over to Azula, upturned and expectant. She scowls at him and his hands but places hers atop. She focuses on heating her hands. Not hot enough to burn but enough to steadily warm Zuko’s hands. It is a little thing Zuko introduced. If she burns him, then she cannot go to court. He says it’s the easiest way to check her mental state. She asked what would happen if she deliberately burned him, huh Zuzu?

He only smiled. They both know she won’t.

Now, Zuko winces as it grows a little too hot to be comfortable and Azula scoffs but takes a deep breath to slowly lower the temperature of the flame. Zuko relaxes.

“See, Azula? This hasn’t set you back.” She would argue it has. Seeing her mutinous expression, Zuko taps her twice on the wrist. “Not _that way,_ Lala. This is hard for you, I get that. I’m not saying you can’t be mad and upset because I was definitely way worse than you when I confronted fa- _Ozai._ I’m just saying you haven’t hurt either of us. That has to count for something, right? That you can be this upset and still in control of yourself.”

He has a point, Azula reluctantly admits. They have seen each other at their worst, or close to. In the early days after Zuko’s appointment to regent, she found him slumped over his desk in a feverish daze.

“No,” he said when she tried moving him. “Just one more paper to sign.”

She burnt the rest so he couldn’t continue. She couldn’t move him from the study without the servants seeing so she fetched a blanket and pillow and helped Zuko onto the floor. He rolled over and vomited to the side then curled up, body wracked with chills. She has seen him vomiting, scared, afraid, and half out of his mind with exhaustion. She has helped him escape many a banquet or meeting when it grew too much for him. She has carried him to his bed and threatened half the court to keep them in line, all for Zuko’s sake, and watched him wake screaming in his bed. _Convinced_ that Ozai was back and trying to burn the other half of his face.

And Zuko- well. They both remember what he has done for Azula. Is _still_ doing. They don’t often talk of what happened in the Earth Kingdom but neither have forgotten. There is a reason he conveniently instated a palace rule that no sharp objects be available in the presence of Fire royalty. It could have been for their security. Their safety. But Azula remembers reaching for a shard of broken pottery and Zuko slapping it out of her hand, eyes shining with panic. It has been a year, but what does that mean when they spent their entire childhoods in fear?

Azula is fifteen now. She demanded a grand celebration, just to see what Zuko would do. She refused to organise it herself.

“That’s not like you,” Zuko commented from his desk. “Usually you _have_ to do everything yourself or it isn’t done right.”

Because everyone else, except maybe Zuko, are _idiots._ Azula didn’t tell him this.

Zuko delivered. He spent weeks organising the most elaborate celebration Azula has ever received and turned to her, afterwards, to ask if she liked it.

It wasn’t about the parade. It was never about the parade.

“Thank you Zuzu,” she said.

He made that funny little face he gets when he never quite understands Azula, but he smiled anyway. They ditched their formal robes afterwards and snuck around the backstreets of Caldera, buying sugar candy and fire flakes and getting it all over themselves. Azula pushed him into a turtleduck pond and laughed as he struggled to get back out of the water, clothes clinging to his skin, then bought the most hideously yellow tunic she has ever laid eyes on in her life. She almost kept it as a gift for Toph. The sight of Zuko, scowling in said tunic while Azula showed the official Fire Royalty token to the vendor in lieu of payment, was well worth it.

She trusts Zuko. Azula doesn’t trust many people. Since they left the palace together, he has never demanded anything in return for that trust. He has never placed conditions upon her behaviour, or threatened her, or told her to stop being Fire Lord if she wants him to stay on her side.

Zuko wants to stay with Ursa. Fine. They’ll stay with Ursa. She hopes Zuko has fun scraping the ashes off the floor later, but this is what he wants. Azula will not begrudge him.

“I hope our stupid mother has beds,” Azula grumbles.

Zuko winces. Azula stares in return.

“Zuko. Please tell me she doesn’t have bedrolls.”

“I’ll go double-check,” he says as he rises, hastily making his way for the house. Azula stands with him and tries grabbing at his arm.

“Oh no you don’t-!”

Zuko speeds up trying to avoid Azula but Azula is fast. Faster than Zuko. She does a running jump and brings them both to the ground, the air from Zuko’s lungs forcibly expelled as his back thuds against the hard dirt. They are laughing before Zuko has even recovered his breath.

Ursa opens the door. Azula’s laughter dies in her throat. Ursa’s expression turns mellow, like spring leaves fading to orange then yellow, no longer vibrant or lively. Ursa looks at them for a long moment, messing around like real siblings, and for a moment Azula thinks that Ursa seems _sad._ Like she wants to be with them but something is holding her back. 

She closes the door with a quiet, “I’ll have dinner ready in an hour.”

Azula has never hated her more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song for the chapter: "A Moment Apart" by Odezsa, for no reason other than that it made me feel things while i was reading. it also fits with Ursa's time while she was gone (which i am waiting a chapter or two to reveal). 
> 
> some of the details behind Ursa's time in the palace + her time away are important to understanding how she is reacting now to seeing the siblings, and how she has changed. (as well as why she was so harsh to Azula in the first place.) i won't lie and say that Ursa was a perfect mother or person, and she definitely did Azula dirty. but as you know, i hate writing anyone off as purely good or evil, so i've attempted to explore Ursa's story some more in tandem with the sibling's, because i refuse to call Ursa the "real villain" or any of the other things i've heard. she was abused by Ozai. i don't think this is addressed enough in this fandom. i actually got a bit emotional when i was writing stuff for Ursa so hopefully that carries over, but i don't know if it was just because i was thinking of some women like her that i know lol. we'll see!
> 
> ALSO, in canon, Ursa DID say goodbye to Azula, but Azula was asleep. she went inside and checked on her one last time, the same way she did to Zuko, except Zuko woke up for a goodbye. but neither of them know that, and at this point Ursa doesn’t want to stir the pot and tell them


	4. dark side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ursa's absence, explained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dark side of the moon - far side, lunar side. the moon's night side, invisible to the sight.

Ursa kneels in the garden, pulling weeds between her fingers. Ozai did the same to her children. He poisoned their minds. He told them that they would never be enough, the same way he did to Ursa. Except for them, it was worse. Ozai wasn’t inflicted upon them through an arranged marriage.

No, he was their father. Ursa would pity her children if her resentment and hatred of Ozai didn’t overpower everything else.

Ursa feels something snap. She looks down at the fire lily, petals crushed in her palm and the stalk bent sideways. She only wanted to kill the weeds. Not the flowers.

It shouldn’t feel so much like a metaphor. Then, Ursa always had a flare for theatre.

She hides her face with her sleeve. Ikem wanders past sometimes, seeking her attention. No one should see Ursa cry. Not even Ikem. It was too dangerous for too long, every expression of emotion weaponised or manipulated. After Ursa married Ozai, she would complain in her rooms to her maids while they helped her undress each evening. She thought she was safe. Then the complaints made their way back to Ozai in trickles, then a flood. Ursa stopped complaining after that.

 _Your daughter is a prodigy_ , the ladies of the court crooned, their Earth Kingdom perfumes hanging like a cloud. It was custom, back then, to wear pillages of war. Ursa always despised it. The one time that Ozai took note of the custom and brought her an embroidered winter cloak from the south, Ursa stared at him with trembling hands then screamed until she lost her voice. Ozai never tried again.

 _She is,_ Ursa would say. Nothing more. They all knew Azula was a prodigy, anyway. She let her tea steam by her elbow.

 _No_ , the others insisted. One leaned forward. _She reflects well upon you. Upon your ability as a mother. Ozai must favour you._

Ursa smiled thinly. Her hands clenched in her lap. That was the truth. Zuko and Azula were extensions of their parents and nothing more. No matter how much Ursa begged and pleaded, they were objects to Ozai. The court refused to let her nurture them. Azula, especially, was guarded from her influence. Too good for her potential to be ruined by her mother.

Ursa knows she is to blame. The court may have nudged Azula away from her, but Ursa was the one to push. She didn’t understand Azula. Not the way she did Zuko. Each day was a cycle of relentless whispers and instructions, and Ursa was tired of hearing how she would never be good enough.

The wives of the ministers said that her robes were outdated, her affection for Ozai limited. The ministers themselves said that Ursa was too rash and emotional to be a suitable wife to Ozai and a lady of the court. They scorned Ursa. When she first arrived in the palace, they belittled her backwater accent. Her way of walking. Even her antiquated etiquette, taught to her by her grandmother before she died. The criticism never stopped – it only grew quieter.

Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Ursa’s only pleasure was sitting by the turtleduck pond with her son. She told herself she would try harder with Azula. She traced it into the ceiling as she lay awake in her bed, straining her ears for the opening of the door. But when Ursa faced her daughter in the morning, already so cruel and manipulative, taunting her friends and spreading rumours just to see her classmates cry, all Ursa could see was another Ozai in training. Cruel for cruelty's sake. For power. 

If Ozai died, would Azula have taken his place? Locking Ursa in her room and ignoring her screams? Whispering that her hairstyle betrayed her lowly origins, and expecting her to smile through the comment in front of the courtiers?

Ursa tried. It wasn’t enough. She regrets, now, refusing to see Azula for herself. Ursa was never able to imagine a relationship with her daughter in the palace. There was no warmth. Not from Ursa, nor Azula. Only crackling ice that moved between them, yawning like a chasm. Ursa thought that in correcting Azula’s behaviours before it was too late, stopping her from burning and destroying things, speaking callously of death, that she could curb Ozai’s influence. She could help Azula become someone who understood more than just cruelty – someone who could have friends rather than allies, who could play without an ulterior motive.

Instead, she understands now that all she did was strengthen Ozai’s words in her mind. Azula did not see correction, as she did with her tutors. She saw criticism. An overbearing, scolding mother who never spent time with her outside of lessons.

Ursa let her fear of Ozai taint her relationship with Azula. When she saw Azula sitting with him, rambling about her firebending lessons or playing _go_ with him, her chest seized with palpitations. Ozai had used her children before. Passing messages- innocent to their ears but deadly to Ursa’s- and using them to torture her. Once, when he thought Ursa’s defiance had grown too strong, arguing against him in front of a servant, he dragged Ursa to her chambers and locked the door. He sent Zuko, then, to sit outside of the door to talk to his “sick” mother.

 _I want to see you, mom,_ Zuko complained loudly. She could hear him shuffling outside the door. _Father says I can’t until you get better._

Ursa broke within two days.

 _I’ll be better,_ she told Ozai, hating herself more than she ever had. She still remembers his victorious smile. She resolved to never let him smile like that again.

She saw it again on the night she killed her father-in-law.

Her children are inside, having their own private discussion. Ursa looks through the window. Zuko seems to almost be putting on an awkward dance, Azula laughing heartily despite her relatively neutral expression. Ursa's chest aches. They need their own time to process seeing her again, despite being the ones to give her the fright of her life when she opened the door.

These things take time. Ursa will give them as much as they need.

Eventually, when Usa has pruned the last of the fire lilies and dug up the weeds, moving onto her begonias, Zuko comes to talk. He asks her to show him the garden. Azula stands behind him, dragging her feet. She won't look at Ursa. She clearly has no interest in the garden, so Ursa tells her there are apples in the kitchen if she is hungry.

Azula's face tightens. Waiting for a trap. Ursa recognises that face from her own mirror, her stomach plummets like she has missed a flight on the stais. Everything feels _wrong._ Azula looks more like Ursa now than she ever did, and Ursa's tongue turns bitter. Fear crafts similarities. It always does. They have the same watchful gaze, preparing for eventualities.

"I won't pretend to know all of what you have been through," Ursa manages quietly. She gestures to the kitchen once more. "But I would never starve a child."

Azula looks to Zuko. He nods, and something in Azula relaxes. She turns sharply on her heel and goes inside, her stride almost haughty. It feels remarkably similar to watching her, aged seven, strut across the courtyard to impress the young kitchen maid.

Ursa shows Zuko her flowers, the rock bed, the sparse grass she cannot urge to grow. Zuko follows with seeming interest, but his eyes never leave hers.

"No turtleduck pond?" he jokes when she stops to stretch her back from kneeling all morning. It is a joke, but his eyes hold mixed emotions. Ursa picks out the main ones - 

Regret. Nostalgia. Bitterness. She sighs and wonders what would have happened if Ozai had remarried, instead. Found someone who would cherish the children as their own and help protect them. 

Ursa used to fantasise about running away. Leaving the palace, Ozai. Even her children. It made her gut curdle in shame but she couldn't help but wish that someone else could take her place. Someone stronger. Someone warmer. Then her children could he loved and raised the way they needed, and Ozai would leave Ursa alone.

Alone, alone, forever alone. No more courtiers and twisting hair needles. Only herself and the dark moon blinking above her. Held responsible only for herself - not a nation. 

There is something playing on Zuko's mind. A triggered memory. She asks him what it is, the way she used to help him verbalise his philosophy lessons and their teachings. 

“Azula never threw rocks at the turtleducks,” Zuko says slowly. He fidgets with the stick in his hand and Ursa watches sadly as he tries to relax. “She threw bread. It hit them by accident.”

The comment strikes her in the heart and Ursa bows, one hand to her chest. She remembers scolding Azula fiercely for throwing rocks at the turtleducks. She thought she was trying to hurt them. Ursa took it as another sign of cruelty, another sign that she needed to stamp out Azula’s ruthlessness before it grew to be something Ozai could control.

Ursa knows she cannot blame herself for how Azula turned out, under Ozai’s questionable care. She left to protect her children. Ozai said they would be safe – that he would make it so. All she had to do was trade Azulon’s life for Zuko’s.

She doesn’t regret that night. Not for one moment. When she heard the death bells tolling, she closed her eyes and prayed for Agni to forgive her sins. Then she kept walking.

Ursa was always a little too cold, a little too proud. Her first boyfriend said she acted like she didn’t need anybody. She was too independent, going to see plays by herself and yelling at the village boys when they started trying to poke a dog with sticks. Ozai liked her spirit. He said she wouldn’t let the court crush her. Besides, he always liked a challenge.

What he didn’t say was that the court wouldn’t crush her. He would.

Ozai was right, in a sense. It was Ursa’s fighting spirit that helped her continue to defy the expectations of the court, then eventually Ozai. He said that they should send the children away to full-time academies, learning to be royal. Ursa fought him until he gave in, then she spent the day with her children in the garden. She remembers how giddy she felt at the victory. She thought she could continue to fight him, but more importantly, continue _winning._

 _Here,_ she thought. _Here is the proof that I can survive this._

Everything was a battle with Ozai. He made sure she had no access to money. If she needed something, she had to get it approved by him first, and he only ever gave the money to her lady-in-waiting. Ursa checked, once. It was exactly enough for the item she mentioned, nothing more. He didn’t want her keeping it aside.

If Ursa wanted a light supper, Ozai told the cooks to prepare the heaviest feast they could. If she wanted to go for a walk, Ozai scheduled endless meetings for her instead. He didn’t care about what Ursa wanted. He only cared for power. He liked knowing that she couldn’t stop him.

 _Why don’t you just fight it?_ her old friend wrote back once, when Ursa tried explaining the stranglehold her marriage with Ozai had become. _Don’t take it laying down, c’mon Ursa._

Ursa _hadn’t._ When Ozai first proposed marriage, she very graciously declined and informed him that she was courting someone else, thank you very much for your kind offer. Ozai returned with flowers and jewellery. Ursa rolled her eyes, watching him approach the house from her bedroom window, then met him halfway to tell him to stop. Ozai’s lip curled.

“We’ll see,” he said, and they did. The next time they met, Ursa flew from the house in a rage, screaming that he couldn’t buy her like that. She couldn’t finish her rant before she broke into furious tears, one arm drawn across her face to hide it from Ozai. 

“I won.” He smiled, cruel and smug. “You’re mine now.”

It wasn’t that Ursa didn’t fight. It was that the odds were stacked against her. _Just say no,_ her friends advised when Ursa first told them that a man was bothering her. Then it became _tell him to go away, get Ikem to confront him, get your parents involved,_ and Ursa tried and tried, she was polite, she was rude, and she argued her throat hoarse but still, Ozai won. The people of her village turned their heads aside so they wouldn’t see. It was better, they thought, to let him take Ursa. She should consider herself fortunate to live in the palace.

They all knew otherwise. Pretending was more convenient.

Ozai sealed the deal by saying that if she didn’t break things off neatly with Ikem, then there would be a _tragic_ accident in the fields. Ursa spent the night before going over her letters to Ikem, running her fingers over his slanted writing. Ikem was never much of a poet. He wrote simply and honestly, none of the misdirection that Ozai favoured. Ikem was the one thing in her life that Ursa could always predict. It broke her heart that she knew exactly how to get him to leave her alone, so he could be safe.

Ursa doesn’t think about their farewell very much. She doesn’t think about her life before the palace at all. Ursa stays in her house and doesn’t leave, buying food in the early mornings or late evenings. She isn’t sure anyone would recognise her now, even if she did decide to rejoin the villagers. Ursa has always been the sort of person to continuously move forwards, and she urged her children to do the same.

Still, she reminisces.

In the palace, she learned to pack all her dreams into boxes. There was no free will. Ursa became an object, not an individual. Ozai told her what to think, what to say, what to wear. He liked Ursa’s spirit, but only to destroy it. Her defiance amused him. A mere trifle, rather than an obstacle.

Ursa is ashamed to admit that he wore her down. They were married for two years before Zuko was born. She was tired of listening to people tell her, day in and day out, that in refusing to produce Ozai an heir, she was failing her duty as a woman. So she went to Ozai. And Zuko was born. The other women in the court, even her own maids and ladies-in-waiting, said that things would get better after Zuko. She bore a son – surely Ozai would now back away.

Except he didn’t. His comments eased, at first, then grew worse. Constant nagging. Ursa remembers bowing, an incline of the head, to a visiting official. Ozai glanced at her and shook his head, disappointment written across his features. He murmured something. The official laughed awkwardly.

What had she done wrong?

He refused to answer her questions and left her stewing in anxiety for a week. Ursa spent the week frantically questioning everyone with any knowledge of court etiquette, asking after her bow, her clothes, her speech. What had she done wrong?

 _Nothing,_ was the answer. Ozai tricked her. Ursa thinks to what Zuko and Azula’s life must have been like, trapped with their father and no mother to try and block him. She has seen Zuko’s scar. That is only the most evident part of those years. She sees the corners of his eyes tighten, a near-unnoticeable flinch, when Ursa closes the door too loudly. She sees Azula’s calculated stillness. Her children were hurting, and Ursa wasn’t there.

But she is now. There is nothing she can do about the past, but if they will have her, she would like to be there for their future.

“I’m sorry,” Ursa says again. There is nothing else to say. How can she explain that time? The pervasive fear that crept into her heart? She was harsh to Azula to try and guide her, but all she did was push Azula away and convince her she was a monster, leaving an opening for Ozai’s machinations. None of them have forgotten. Nor can they forget.

Ursa has some atoning of her own to do. The pity of it is that you can never predict the outcome of your actions, especially in parenting. It would be easy for her to say that she would never have done those things if she had known how negatively Azula would respond, but she cannot take them back.

Ursa did her best. That is all she can say. It is still more than Ozai, and the fact makes her heart ache for her children.

She should have woken Azula for a goodbye. She looks up, and sees her daughter already watching her through the windows. Her face quickly vanishes. Ursa doesn’t understand her daughter, even now. She is an unknown force. Ursa was so concerned with _correction_ that she forgot to ask after Azula’s interests, her hobbies.

“Azula liked gymnastics,” Ursa says. She fiddles with her necklace. “When she was young. Does she still?”

Zuko scratches his head and shrugs. “I don’t think she ever liked it. She was just copying Ty Lee.”

Right. Ursa nods, taking the news in stride. Maybe even Azula doesn’t understand what she enjoys. Ursa could give up now, say that there is no need to put effort into bonding with Azula when Azula doesn’t even seem to have a personality, some days, beyond the arrogant persona she built for herself. But she does – Ursa has seen it. Wrestling with her brother and admiring the pattern of the china teacups Ursa laid out.

Ursa can be there with Azula while she finds herself. _It’s a mother’s duty,_ she thinks to herself, then stops. _No._ It’s something that Ursa wants to do – not obligation or principle. She _wants_ to see what kind of person her daughter becomes, and she wants to help her.

Most days, Ursa wanted to quit. She wanted to leave everything behind. When she was young, she wanted to join a travelling theatre troupe and never settle down, seeing a new place every month. Sometimes she imagined Ikem smiling by her side. Sometimes, alone. Marriage, children? That was Ozai's plan. Not hers, and the knowledge strangled her. She wanted feedom.

Now here her children are, six years after she left to protect them. Begging for her. For a mother. 

Ursa isn’t obligated to do anything anymore, but she wants it all the same. She wonders if that makes her better or worse than she was before, but quickly decides it no longer matters. Her children are here. Ursa made her decision the moment she opened the door to their hopeful faces.

She fled the palace after she killed Azulon, leaving only with the clothes she was wearing, a winter cloak, and a handful of coins. Where could she go? Nowhere but Hira’a, the hometown remote enough that news of her reappearance could not easily leak out. Ozai would be able to suppress it.

When she returned, she discovered her parents ill. There was nothing to be done, the doctor told her gravely. Ursa fed them and bathed them and broke down in the empty kitchen, because parents are supposed to care for their children, not the other way around, and she felt intensely guilty for wishing they had been well enough to welcome her back. Ursa hadn’t felt safe in years. All she wanted was for her security to be returned to her.

Her parents held on as long as they could. Her mother died within a few months. Her father clung to life, unable to move from his bed. He wasted away. By the end, he couldn’t recognise Ursa. He died shortly before her children came to her.

Ursa knows about regretting missed opportunities. She will not let her children slip away from her. Not for any past regret or concern. 

She stands, brushing the dirt off her robes. She needs to organise fresh changes of clothes for them, and more permanent arrangements for their rooms. Whether they stay or not – and if Ursa thinks back to what she has heard, she knows in her heart they will not – they need actual beds. Places to keep their things. Something of their own here so that if they choose to visit, they can feel welcome.

Ursa resolves to visit the markets as soon as possible. Then she moves inside with Zuko, to find what else her children were hoping for, in coming to Hira’a.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was really nervous about posting an Ursa-centric chapter, especially this early in the fic, but i wanted to establish my version of Ursa so that the events make sense going forward and wires don't get crossed too much with The Search. i hope it wasn't too boring x  
> next chapter will be Azula again!
> 
> another note: i re-read some parts of "we'll burn that bridge when we get to it" and now i'm feeling insecure about my writing BECAUSE of my writing lmao


	5. near side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula faces her mother, and conflicting memories of the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> near side - the moon faces earth.

Azula expected the anger. She expected the regret in Ursa’s eyes, and the longing in Zuko’s own.

What she hadn’t anticipated was the awkwardness.

 _This is my mother,_ she reminds herself, but fidgets on the lounge. Ursa potters in the kitchen with tea, Zuko close by her side as he tries to help her. It reminds Azula of illness. Of being weak and afraid, Zuko the only person still smiling upon her. Back then, Zuko brewed her tea so she could recover her strength and complete their journey home. He did it again for her after their coronations when Azula couldn’t sleep. He talked to the healers, received chamomile and ginger, brewing it quietly by her bed where she could see what he was doing.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Zuko. She did. But her mind roared more than it whispered, sometimes, and it was difficult to push aside the niggling voice saying, _he’s going to kill you. He’s going to add poison and take the throne for himself._

Azula knew it wasn’t true. That Zuko would never hurt her. Even now, he is the one person in the world whom she doesn’t doubt. He doesn’t brew tea for her only when she is ill, although that is the most frequent occurrence. Sometimes they sit in the garden together while he serves cups of jasmine. Azula doesn’t care for the flowery taste, but Zuko says it is good for the nerves. Calming. Azula nearly spat it out on principle the first time he told her, and she replaced the cup in its saucer. But when she drank it, Zuko’s face glowed.

Zuzu always doubted himself. As a prince, as a leader, as a son. He still thinks himself a poor regent and brother. Azula still cannot find the words to convince him otherwise. There are some things that cannot be touched. Some fears. Azula has an ocean inside her but Zuko has a waterfall – unceasing, torrential. So she drinks the tea to make Zuko smile.

It hurt to write to Suki. Not because Azula has fallen out of touch with Suki, although it became increasingly difficult to find the time for social engagements after the coronation. No, it is because Azula was writing to Suki for the help of the Kyoshi Warriors. Which now includes Ty Lee. Which also means Mai. The two people who Azula trusted more than anyone, and watched as they struck her in return.

They had cause. Azula knows they did. She hurt them, and they saved her.

Suki agreed to help guard the palace from the ministers in Azula and Zuko's absence, Ty Lee in green alongside her and Mai floating behind. Maybe Mai watches over Azula's room, knives in her sleeves. Maybe Ty Lee wanders the gardens where she taught Azula to do hanstands and cartwheels, until Azula realised she would never be as good as Ty Lee. Even after everything, Mai and Ty Lee have not abandoned Azula entirely. But there is no lingering fondness in their eyes. Only the truth of memory. 

They are not friends. Not anymore. Too much has happened, despite the trio coming to an understanding after Azula's coronation. She knows the girls in a way no one else does, knows them down to the very marrow of their bones, the blood of their hearts. Azula knows what they fear and what they hope and she understands, intimately, how to use it against them. It's the same for them. They look at her and see the girl of their childhood, who drew them together but also broke them apart. They know about Azula's mother, Zuko's banishment, and all the years in-between. 

It's too much. It's so much. They can never be strangers to each other, not anymore, but they cannot be friends. The three of them are trapped in a strange purgatory. 

Azula remembers gasping into the table of the teashop, choking on resentment and abandonment. Again, always with the tea. She should hate it by now. Somehow, she doesn’t. Just like she doesn't hate the people who abandoned her. 

She watches Zuko and Ursa dance around each other, each trying to avoid jostling the other’s arms, balancing teacups and saucers and pots of tea. Ursa picks up a spicy blend that Zuko looks at with interest, then puts it down. Ursa instead reaches for a plain black tea with a short glance at Azula.

Is this…?

Are they trying to be _courteous_ of Azula’s tastes?

Here is the thing – Ursa does not know them anymore. Azula sees overlapping layers when she looks at her mother. The person she knew, and the person she is now. Ursa moves the same, sounds the same, holds her sleeves by the hem the same, but she is _different._ Her accent has mellowed, softened by the dialect of Hira’a rather than the sharp, cutting corners of the palace. Azula knows her own speech is shaped by Caldera. Zuko’s is an interminable mixture of high court, Earth Kingdom, and sailor, with traces of other, more foreign accents.

Azula closes her eyes while the tea brews. She can smell it seeping into the air. When she tries to think of things to say to her mother, she falters. The Ursa of her memories was tall, and stern, and read letters aloud in a funny voice when Azula was small, but that was long ago. Azula most clearly remembers her expression when Azula told her father said she could be heir.

Ursa seized her by the shoulders. “Your father already has an heir,” she thundered lowly, so none could overhear. “I don’t want to hear another word of that.”

What was her expression? Azula thought it was anger, at the time. Fury at her daughter for trying to usurp her son, perhaps, when Azula had time to ponder the question during Zuko’s exile.

Now, watching the tenderness of Ursa’s smile when Zuko turns to meet her eyes, Azula thinks it was terror.

She knows Ursa would never be terrified on her behalf. No matter the stories she told, or the bracelets Azula clutched, the unarguable statement is that Ursa loves Zuko more than Azula.

Yet here they are, trying to make her a tea that she will drink, just so she can feel included in their little ritual. They don’t even _know each other._ Maybe it would feel less condescending if they did. Zuko knows Azula – it was his hands that pushed aside the spicy blend, while Ursa vainly searched for something she thought her daughter might like.

It feels painful to watch them. Azula could hate Ursa more if she had smiled and served the blend anyway, ignoring Azula and her tastes, but she doesn’t even know what _Zuko_ likes. She pulled it aside for herself, not him. If Ursa were familiar with Zuko alone, and not Azula, then she could rage and scream and throw her tea at the two of them and hate them both in peace.

But Ursa _doesn’t_ know Zuko. And he doesn’t know her. Not as she is now – a new person, with a new life and new memories that they are not privy to. Instead, Azula chokes on the miserable pity clawing up her throat.

Her mother looks _sad._ When she thinks they can’t see. Azula tries to summon the monsoon of rage that consumed her on the first day in Hira’a, but cannot find it within herself.

She was desperate. Then she was secure. Then she was brittle and close to breaking, determined to put her brother in chains, and then she saved his life and covered for him and nothing after that mattered.

Azula has learned to grieve for the past. A father who played checkers and _go_ with her, a mother who had not yet stopped brushing her hair. An unscarred brother. She grieved for it and packaged it away into boxes, then grieved again with the realisation that her father would never accept her. It crowded her, like a swarm of locusts. Grief is invasive. It follows, wherever you go.

Some days, Azula thinks there is no emotion left in her. The moment she ordered her father be taken to the dungeons, staring blankly at the hollow shell he had become, she thinks she sealed everything away. All her anger, her pain, her resentment of her father. It vanished. Slipping quietly into the night while Azula cried into the charred floor.

She hated her father. She loved him. The two emotions co-existed within her, swirling around, balancing light and dark equally. Loving her father was like trying to draw blood from a stone. Hopeless, useless. Painful.

He was a terrible leader and a terrible father and Azula understands a little more with each passing day exactly what kind of devastation their war brought. Azula once contributed to it. Was _proud,_ even, knowing that her father would praise her endeavours.

Not anymore. Azula may not have any particular feelings about peace, but she does have strong feelings about being a different person than her father was.

Upon waking from a nightmare, she once quietly held Zuko by the wrist while they sat by the window. He said the night air would help her wake up. She remembers his tone, almost nonchalant, as if it was a known fact he was imparting.

“Why don’t I hate him anymore?” she asked Zuko. Only, that wasn’t quite right. She hated what Ozai did. She hated the stupid war and the stupid training, and all the times he made her feel like she could never measure up to his impossible standards.

But it had become almost divorced in her mind from her father. There was what she endured because of him, and then there was the father in her mind who asked her to save him from the Avatar. And she looked away. Feeling as though she was betraying him, even as she did so.

There is Ozai, and then there is her father. Azula still hates Ozai. Maybe she always will. But when she thinks of her father, face pale and refusing to eat, asking instead for death, her anger quietly dissolves. Leaving only clay on her tongue.

Zuko considered the question, rubbing his eyes tiredly but still giving her his attention.

“I don’t know, Lala,” he answered finally. His hands fell into his lap. “I really don’t know. I hate that he burned me. I hate that he exiled me. But some days, when I think about how things used to be, I can’t say I don’t want that again. The father I remember.”

They sat in silence while the night slowly faded.

“What would you trade for it?” Azula asked. She laid her head on his shoulder, speaking without looking at him. He gently stroked her hair. “If you could have that. A perfect family. What would you trade?”

Zuko quietly sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “Because it wouldn’t be real. And I have everything I need right here, with you.”

Zuzu was always an idiot. But with him, you know that whatever idiotic statement passes his lips, avoiding his sparse mental filter, must be the truth. It is Azula’s only comfort.

Zuko wins the battle to serve the tea, and he motions quickly for Ursa to take her seat. He kneels, smoothly and professionally, holding the tray with one hand and placing the cups on the table with the other. Azula watches rings of condensation form around the bottoms. Ursa should really find a cover for the table if she wants to avoid ruining the wood.

It is the sort of thing her mother would have cared about, in the palace. Do this. Don’t do that. Follow protocol, Azula. Now, she looks across at Ursa and finds her face relaxed. Content to watch her son serve tea.

“I hope you like the tea,” Ursa says gently.

Azula feels her heart harden. Ozai is out of sight and has not been seen for months. But her mother is here and _smiling,_ like nothing is wrong. Ursa may not deserve her hatred. Not like Ozai. But where Azula feels nothing when she sees Ozai’s name- beyond a pang in her chest at the absence of emotion, wondering what broke inside her that night- she looks at Ursa’s face and feels pity warring with anger.

“I hope you like your affair,” Azula answers coolly.

Ursa’s expression shutters. She holds her tea close to her chest. Zuko looks between the two of them, half wondering and half preparing for battle. He knows Azula too well. When she strikes, she always, always goes right for the vulnerably underbelly.

“What is she talking about?” Zuko’s voice is guarded. He remains standing, looking down over them. Dread slowly lines his face. Zuko doesn’t often let his emotions show, beyond frustration and anger, but Azula has practice in reading him.

Ursa sighs. “My neighbour, Ikem. We were sweethearts in our youth. Now-“ she hesitates, thinking of the right way to frame it. “He brings food, sometimes. Flowers. It's not what you think.”

Zuko scoffs, Azula with him. Ursa withdraws further into her corner of the table.

“Too busy for us, but not too busy for your old fiancé,” Azula mocks. She knows even as she speaks that she is being unnecessarily cruel. But her father is weak, and pitiful, and she cannot release her anger at him without wanting to fall to her knees in apology for what she let them to do him.

Ursa is an easy target. She always has been. It is why she was driven from the palace, and Zuko after her. The two of them always saw vulnerability and chose to ignore it. Safeguarding others. Azula is the one who exploits without mercy or consideration.

“Azula,” Zuko warns, because that is his role.

“Going to have children with him and replace us too?” Azula twists the knife further, because that is hers.

Ursa looks down into her tea. The formerly still surface ripples. There is no matching anger from her. No response. Only silence, and the absence of excuses.

Azula leans back, suddenly cold. She turns to the window. The flowers have not yet begun to fall. They are still bright buds lining the slender branches, others burrowed into the earth of the garden. She wanted Ursa to scream back. To give Azula a reason to hurl every transgression, every old scolding back in her face.

Ursa has done nothing but apologise since Azula arrived. She reaches inside herself and feels ashes, her fingertips coated with red. She bleeds. Hurling thorny traps at her mother and tricking her into revealing the ugly parts of herself, Azula bleeds.

Her mother is trying. Azula, bitterly, can recognise that. It was always Ozai who favoured Azula and Ursa who turned her away. Why is Ursa the one trying now? Why is Ozai half-mad, locked in a prison of Azula’s own decision?

She wants to hate her mother. Desperately, with all her shrivelled, blackened heart. Her mind will not allow it.

“I’m going for a walk,” she tells Zuko, resentment heavy on her tongue. 

He does not ask when she will return. She hates that even now, on a trip designed to be his break from the burden of the throne, his last chance at catharsis with their mother, everything revolves around Azula. Zuko would never even consider ignoring her here. 

“Be safe,” he says instead, still recovering from the bombshell of Ikem’s existence.

No one asks Azula how she knows. There is no need. After all, they left her alone when they went to the garden. Neighbours are awfully chatty on Hira’a. Only someone like Azula would see opportunity for pain amongst kindness. 

_We hardly know each other,_ she thinks to herself as she wanders the street. Ursa thinks she knows what sort of person Azula is. What she has done. Who she has become. But she doesn't _know._ She wasn't there when Azula sat through her first war meeting, thinking the whole time of her brother's cardinal mistake, or when Azula planned her first military battle, or when she was dispatched to ruin her brother and dragged a city down alongside them. Likewise, Ursa knows but cannot _know_ of Zuko's fruitless chase for the Avatar, the burning towns he left in his wake.

Ursa is the one who abandoned them, but Azula cannot dislodge the shame that sits heavy in her gut. She kicks at a rock. Azula wants her mother's hand on her shoulder and proud, bright eyes, _I'm proud of you Azula,_ and motherly hugs she could only dream of when she was nursing burns from training. 

She wants her mother. Like a missing limb or a leaking valve in her heart, she wants her mother. Ursa is _right there,_ closer than she has been in six years, yet when Azula looks at her she seems more distant than ever. Maybe Ursa truly wants to move on. To start from scratch in a new town, with a new lover, making new children that will grow to replace Zuko and Azula in her heart. Maybe that is Azula's destiny - to be forgotten by her parents. 

Agni knows it is all she deserves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have this chapter i guess? i'm very tired from getting exam results and i am prime A of what happens when you tie your self worth with your grades


	6. waxing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ursa reveals an unexpected twist about Azula's relationship with Ozai. Azula ruminates on love, and conditions for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> waxing - increasing amount of illumination of the moon's face
> 
> (i know all these cycles are out of order but i'm whacking them in the way i am for a reason)

Many people have told her she does not need to be perfect to be loved. Azula knows, by now. She has written it into her skin and repeated it soundlessly to herself at night until she has the phrase memorised. She can be loved without being perfect. Zuko is proof. He embraces every flaw and lets her hurl cups of tea, and he loves her anyway. The difference is that while love may not be conditional, relationships are. Azula didn’t fulfil Mai and Ty Lee’s conditions. Not towards the end. She mistreated them. However much they loved her, they could not accept a relationship of fear and distrust.

They could not choose to stop loving Azula, the friend of their memories who rescued them from their miserable, boring lives. But they could choose to walk away. Choose to start anew.

There are things, Azula thinks, that even Zuko does not understand. They keep telling Azula that love is unconditional, love is faultless, love is not dependent upon perfection, and she is slowly understanding. But doesn’t that mean Ozai never loved her? If he was going to love her, he would have from the start. So he didn’t. All they had was a relationship, and Ozai’s conditions were that Azula be perfect. In return, he would deliver wilted petals of affection, and faint movements of the mouth that could be interpreted as a smile.

Azula knows her father didn’t love her. She sees it- the absence- when she visits. He doesn’t want her presence. Her comfort. Her love. He only wants what she can do for him.

_Azula. Release me. Azula. Kill me. Azula. Bring back my bending._

She yelled at Ursa and accused her of trying to replace their family with Ikem. New town, new lover. Potential new children. Then she stormed outside, cursing bitterly. Who, what, she doesn’t know.

Ursa hasn’t done anything to replace them. But she _will._ Azula can foresee it the way she foresaw Zuko’s eventual departure. Ursa will marry Ikem, because she is lonely, because he is familiar, and when they are married, he will want children. Then Ursa will have her perfect new life and Zuko and Azula will be relegated to the sidelines once more.

 _Go away,_ Ursa will say. _I don’t want anything ruining this second chance._

Zuko will go, because he is a good person even though it will kill him, and Azula will go with him. She can see it playing out before her. Everyone already has their lines. All they are waiting for is the director’s cue.

They don’t even realise. Only Azula sees what is to come. She regrets yelling at Ursa, regrets pushing the tea aside and shunning her mother’s thoughtfulness, but it tastes bitter on her tongue. Too bitter to stomach.

“You were gone for a long time,” Zuko says quietly. His eyes burn, like embers. He always had eyes too serious for his age. “I’m sorry she said those things. But she’s mad for a reason.”

“I really aren’t dating Ikem.” Ursa tries conveying her sincerity, a hand resting on Zuko’s.

He doesn’t move his away, nor does he move closer.

“I know.” Zuko briefly turns his head. He must be able to see Azula outside, and Azula must be okay because he turns back to Ursa. “I’m happy for you. Really. If you want to date again, that’s okay with me. Azula, she’s just-“

“Struggling?” Ursa suggests.

Zuko deflates, then nods. “Yeah. She’s struggling. We both are. It’s just _hard._ Everything is so different. We’re all so different.”

“It isn’t easy for me either.” Zuko looks up sharply, expecting Ursa to appear bitter, but she only returns his gaze wearily. “I’m trying too, Zuko. I just wanted to brew her tea,” and she sighs, pushing the teapot aside.

Zuko watches awkwardly, hoping she doesn’t cry and feeling awful for it. The last time someone cried, it was Aang. He was overwhelmed during training and crying furious tears. He finally burst from the pressure of the invasion hanging over his head and the uniquely brutal teaching style of the two siblings. Zuko tried patting him on the back, per Sokka’s advice, and told him uncle’s best jokes, but nothing helped.

“Look,” Zuko said in the end. “This whole situation sucks. You’ve got a lot on your plate, I get that. But there’s no helping it either. You’ve just got to accept that you can only be who you are, Aang. Not who we want you to be. And that has to be enough.”

Zuko isn’t very good at giving advice. It’s a miracle Azula hasn’t killed him. Aang didn’t either, only quietly wiping his eyes and moving onto the next kata. Somehow, Zuko doesn’t think any of that would work with his mother.

He hasn’t seen her in years. It’s strange. He remembers her as both gentler and sharper than she is. Nothing about the palace was as he remembered, upon his return. Zuko doesn’t mind so much that mother isn’t the same either.

Ursa keeps staring at the pots listlessly. Zuko tries taking them off her hands, but she insists that Azula will be back soon, so they need to keep it on the table for her.

“I don’t know.” Zuko places his hands in his lap. “When Azula is mad, she takes a while to calm down.”

“I can wait,” Ursa replies calmly. She fetches towels to wrap around the teapot to maintain its warmth. Zuko tactfully doesn’t point out that he could do the same thing, as a firebender.

Zuko talks her through the missing years. He mentions his ship, his crew, the search for the Avatar that grew more hopeless by year. He tells her of Azula’s training. Zuko’s stint in the Earth Kingdom. The lightning, the lies. Then the the arrest orders that brought everything down upon their heads.

Ursa listens quietly. She doesn’t react often, except with a sudden exhale or a despondent shake of her head. Zuko was never one for words. Ursa’s silence helps. She smiles when he pauses for air.

“Thank you for helping.”

Lala comes back, because she always does. Zuko has faith where she does not. Lala comes back and she drinks the tea, and they sit together at the table trying to pretend that none of them feel any semblance of disappointment at the awkwardness.

Azula doesn’t apologise. He hadn’t expected her to, and neither had Ursa. One day Azula will learn. For now, baby steps. That was how Zuko started.

Strangely, or perhaps not considering their trio, the conversation drifts to Ozai. Ursa doesn’t mention what marriage to him was like. She doesn’t mention the training, the lessons, the fierce barbs that hooked into the children.

Azula digs. She has no choice. Something dark and dangerous still simmers underneath her skin, urging her to restart the conflict.

“Did he ever talk about me? When I wasn’t there?”

Ursa sighs. She traces the rim of the teacup with her finger, frowning down at the silver lines.

“Ozai would boast,” she explains slowly, reluctantly. “About your achievements. _Look what my daughter did. She is top of the nation in bending. No one is better than her_. Then he would go to the ministers, the courtiers, and tell them what a difficult child you were. I always hated that. Watching him smile to your face and take credit for all your achievements, then spread lies about how rude, how ungrateful you are. I had my flaws as a parent, Azula. I know. But I never pretended to be something I wasn’t.”

 _The bar is underground by now,_ Azula thinks hysterically. It sounds like a joke Toph would make. She can hear her voice, ending in a childish cackle. Toph made many jokes like that while they travelled on the bison. It distracted from her fear of flying.

Zuko’s expression turns concerned. “Azula, are you-“

“I’m fine,” she snaps, and holds her body still. Her blood roars in her ears. She flexes her hand then clenches it. Inhale. Exhale. Azula tries slowing her breathing and forcing her chest to stop shaking. It doesn’t work.

Ursa tries reaching for her. “Sweetie, please-“

“I said _I’m fine!_ ” Azula screams, slamming her hands against the table and rising in the same instant. “Why can’t you just _leave me alone? Why can’t all of you just leave me alone?”_

Her voice screeches, grating against her own ears. Ursa flinches back. Zuko worries at his lip. Azula wants them to leave. She wants to walk into the night and never return. She wants them to die. She wants to die. Is this life? An endless stream of finding new ways to be hurt?

Azula kicks at her chair and walks out to the garden, slamming the door behind her. The impact reverberates through the ground. Azula almost pauses, panic flitting through her mind. What if the servants hear? What if it leaks back to the ministers and they try to have her deposed again?

She relaxes as she remembers there is no one here, hating herself for it. Azula should be able to scream and rage as much as she likes. It shouldn’t matter whether someone hears or not. Anger does not wait for permission. Azula will shout whether she is allowed to or not.

She throws herself onto the garden bench. Her mother painted it herself. Azula wants to set the whole bench alight. She wants to rip up the fire lilies and burn down the house and rip out all her hair, and she wants to lay down underneath the moon and do nothing but breathe. Azula cannot do anything about her anger. She cannot force it to dissipate, nor can she move its stubborn heart. Ozai is already half-dead, imprisoned somewhere out of sight. There is no one to get revenge against. There is no agenda anymore. There is no use for this emotion in her chest, or the acid she chokes on.

With nothing to do and no one to punish, Azula only has two options. Accept it or die.

She will move on. She will. Azula knows, peripherally, that she is not being rational right now. She knows she is emotional and that her thoughts are clouded by her anger. But Azula feels the shaking of her bones and thinks, _I don’t want to accept this. I don’t want to be positive about this._

She wants to be _angry._ She wants to drag Ozai from his prison and force him to regret every bad word he ever said about her, every punishing training session.

Azula did everything right. She covers her face with her arm so no one can see the moisture slowly staining her face, or the ugly snot dripping from her nose. She did everything right. Azula played the game- she studied, she trained, she groomed herself to the perfect heir. She thought, _it’s okay if I’m not happy now. I can be happy later._ Then she thought that things like happiness didn’t matter, so long as she had father’s attention. Azula could be safe.

Father took credit for everything. Azula believed it to be yet another condition for his affection. But he took credit for everything, praising her for her dedication, her talent, using it to drive a wedge between her and Zuko, her peers, then turned around and slandered her. _What a bad child. How rude. How ungrateful. She should reflect upon herself._

He blamed her for everything, too. Said it was her fault that they weren’t a proper father and daughter. If only Azula were a better child, more loyal, if only she talked to him and understood her role-

Azula cries not because she is shocked by what Ursa has revealed. No, the most tragic part is that Azula _isn’t_ shocked. Of course Ozai would do that. Of course he would. He hadn’t hurt her enough. Ursa couldn’t leave even the illusion alone- she had to dance over the ashes to make sure Azula understands that her father never loved her. Not for a single moment. Not even when they played checkers together in the summer sun, whispering rumours over her shoulder just to ruin her.

Azula is sick and tired of crying in gardens because of her family members, but it seems to be her perpetual state of existence. She never used to cry. She never used to let things hurt her. But Azula has friends who care, who write letters to check in and ask if she is eating enough, if she is sleeping, and Zuko brings her tea and soup when she is sick. When nobody cares, you learn not to either. Now she has sympathy wherever she turns, and Azula wanted to let herself feel things again. She wanted to stop being the machine people labelled her as.

Now, she remembers why she stopped crying in the first place. It reveals too much. All Ursa has to do is look outside, and all the world will know that Azula cares about what her father thought of her. That it hurts to know he was so two-faced. She thought one of Ozai’s only good qualities, the saving grace to their ill-fated relationship, was that he was kind to her when no one else was. That he gave her attention and fostered her interests.

It was all a lie. Everything was about control. Bring Azula up, only to bring her down. Make her seem like the perfect heir, convince the ministers there will be a suitable replacement for Zuko when he is exiled, then tarnish her reputation so thoroughly that she will never be able to take the throne without him.

Well Azula is on the throne now. Ozai is in prison. Azula _won._ She won, she proved everyone wrong. She can stop fighting now. They were wrong and she was right. She has the crown, her brother, friends. _Everything._

Azula wipes her face with her sleeve and wonders why it doesn’t feel like she won. Like she needs to stand back up and continue fighting, continue proving her worth. To crush all their misunderstandings and lies.

But Azula shouldn’t _have_ to prove herself. What does their opinion matter? She knows the truth. She doesn’t have to contort herself again to escape their judgement. Isn’t that horrible? She doesn’t have to do anything, fight anything, prove anything, but she _wants_ to. Because deep in her heart, Ozai’s opinion still matters to her. Azula might hate Ursa in this moment, for refusing to let the illusion continue, but mostly she hates herself. All Ursa did was tell the truth. It was Azula who let herself be hurt by it. She cannot fault her mother for something she intended to help heal.

She rubs at her knees, which ache from sitting in the frigid night air. Azula feels calmer now. Clearer. She tilts her head to look at the crisp white moon, clouds drawn in the sky. It’s like cleaning a wound. It hurts, at first. But it is better to release all the trapped debris before it turns to poison.

The truth has surfaced. It always does, in the end. Now Azula knows the truth of what happened. What Ozai said and did. Power, power, more power. Control. Nothing mattered to him unless it was manipulable. Azula silently thanks the moon that she is not like that anymore. It is hard to care about anything beyond herself and Zuko sometimes, Azula’s limbs growing weary. Why should she care? Will it benefit her?

But extending her care grows easier with practice. Carving new habits and routines, discarding the old. Asking the servants if they are truly getting their days off, writing to her friends, trying little by little to grow outside of who she was.

Some people are born kind. Others make themselves kind. Isn’t that the greater achievement, in the end?

Azula doesn’t want to be like Ozai. Never again.

Dismay strikes her all over again as she recalls Ursa’s gentle words. It wasn’t even intended to hurt her. Azula can distinguish the differences in tone and inflection. Ursa was merely trying to help kill the last of the falsehood that peppers her memories. In a way, Ursa has made things easier. Azula no longer feels guilty about locking her father away. Just tired.

Looking at Ursa is difficult. Azula retreats to her room instead, and Zuko drops by only to deliver more blankets.

“It’s a cold night,” he says, and she can hear him setting them down in a pile next to her. “Tell me if you need more, okay?”

He leaves, footsteps eerily silent. She often forgets that he trained himself in stealth. Again and again, people reforging themselves into new creations. Zuko has always been an explosively loud person, in temper and manner. But he managed. Now Azula will manage to turn this mess of a situation to something good.

There is still so much to do and see, both within the nation and out. Toph has a new school established in the south of the Earth Kingdom. Azula wants to visit. There is Suki, Mai, and Ty Lee watching over the palace, and Katara has offered to check on the lightning damage sustained by both Zuko and Azula during their various battles.

She almost wants to tap out. To say, _this is not for me. I would rather sleep for the next hundred years._ Life feels more difficult than not, most days. Azula can close her eyes but someone still pries them open to reveal a new problem, a new hideous truth that cuts her to her core. Like tonight- old wounds reopening under a barrage of unwitting salt.

But her only options are to continue moving forward or die.

Azula is not willing to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many times can i make Azula storm out to the garden: the fic.  
> the next chapter will have an actual plot hopefully. so far this fic has just been exploring different ideas/themes each chapter which i hope is okay?? i'm gonna try and get the ball rolling a bit soon. i also had to merge some areas in this so it may have a few little chunky transitions between scenes  
> anyways, take care in case this chapter raised any issues! reading my work can be an emotional experience i'm told, so please take care of yourself if it does get too heavy for you at any point <3


	7. apogee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apogee - the point at which the moon is furthest from the earth. also: climax, highest point of development.

Zuko makes rice porridge in the morning. Azula seats herself at the table, blanket drawn over her head and shoulders and staring sullenly into the kitchen. Zuko clicks his tongue when he notices. Azula pulls a face in response. She catches Ursa smiling into her teacup and immediately stops, withdrawing back into her cocoon.

Part of her mind screams that this is _wrong._ Azula should sit up straight in her best robes, not a hair out of place, and present an unshakable front. But she is not who she used to be, and Zuko is in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up as he burns porridge, and even Ursa is relaxed rather than sitting primly.

“Zuzu,” Azula sighs once the charred smell hits her nose.

“I’m managing,” he calls back, frustrating clanging following. Azula rolls her eyes. “I can handle this, Lala.”

Zuko says that about many things. The paperwork, the meetings, the gardens. He swears up and down that he can handle this, then the next thing Azula hears is the servants whispering that the regent collapsed in the lower pavilion, and Azula has to sweep in to save the day.

It would help if Zuko wasn’t such an asshole about accepting help. He snaps and barks and insists that he is fine, even as his skin turns clammy and loses its pallor. But Zuko’s abrasive personality gives her permission to express her own. Back then, Azula rolled her eyes at him and tutted, then offered to fetch her rouge so he could appear less spirit-like.

Zuko predictably stormed off. Azula took the opportunity to lock him out of his office before he worked himself to death, and attended the next meeting in his place. The ministers glanced at each other uneasily, unsure if Azula was even allowed to be there with her _tragically ill health._ But no one dared question her presence.

Azula looks at Ursa. “Do you know how to cook porridge without burning it, mother?”

Ursa laughs quietly to herself, one hand over her mouth. “I would say so, yes.”

“ _Hey,_ ” Zuko interjects sharply. He stands over them with the pot nestled between his hands. “At least insult it _after_ you’ve tasted it.”

Azula withdraws a small tub of ginger from underneath her blanket. She sets it on the table, looking Zuko in the eye as he rolls his eyes and serves the porridge.

He wants to feel closer to mother. He wants them all to bond. Cooking breakfast was his idea – he wanted Azula to help, originally, but rapidly concluded it was a hopeless endeavour after Azula kept complaining that the porridge was too spicy.

“Too plain, you mean,” he grumbled, but relented and started over.

Azula escorted herself to the table to wait while he fumbled his way through making rice porridge. Eventually, Ursa joined them, making herself tea while Zuko was distracted.

She knows Zuko has the same thoughts as her, sometimes. _What happens once I am no longer useful? What happens once people no longer need me?_

The difference between them is that Zuko has gradually, painstakingly endeared himself to first the staff, then the people. They will miss him if he is replaced or overthrown. Azula? The dark swirls of the shore seem enticing at night. The only people who would miss her are Zuko, and perhaps Toph and Suki. She is foolishly disposable. She ensured that fate when she fell to her knees after Ozai’s defeat, instead of rejoicing.

The porridge is not as burned as Azula feared. Judging from Ursa’s sudden delicate cough into her handkerchief, Azula has also been desensitised to Zuko’s horrible cooking.

“He used to be worse,” she tells Ursa. She ignores the strange pulling in her gut. She can do this. She can help Zuko accomplish his little objective.

Their trip was not about Azula and her history with Ursa. This was always about Zuko. His need for mother and closure. Azula agreed to come because he is her brother, because she cares for him, because she needs time to figure out her next move in the palace.

Even here, surrounded only by family, she is still treated like a crumbling cliffside. Azula tries not to be resentful.

“We can’t hide your presence forever,” Ursa says to the room. She takes another bite of the porridge. “I’ve already had people asking about whether the two strange children found me.”

“What do you suggest?” Zuko looks at her, trusting as ever.

Ursa hesitates. Azula sighs, already knowing they will not enjoy the suggestion. It is the face Ursa made whenever she told Azula training was cancelled, or that the gardens were closed to Zuko.

“You should go to school,” and oh Azula was _right._ “Just for a couple of days, until we figure out what to do.”

“I’m the Fire Lord,” Azula scoffs. She leans back and crosses her arms. “I know more about this nation than they ever will. I was educated by the best instructors in the Fire Nation.”

She looks at Zuko. He is frowning down into his porridge, his hair nearly covering his eyes. It is much longer than it used to be.

The longer Azula looks, the more horrified she feels.

“Zuko. Tell me you don’t agree with her.”

Zuko peels his eyes away reluctantly. “I don’t think it’s a _bad_ idea,” he says slowly, clearly treading in deadly waters.

“Is there even a school here?” Azula demands, rising from the table as her voice climbs in pitch. “Anything more than a dirty room with mediocre students? I am the _Fire Lord._ You cannot make me.”

“I can’t,” Ursa agrees demurely. She finishes her tea. “You don’t have to make a decision right now. I have to go into town anyway. We’re running low on groceries. Would you like to accompany me, Azula? We can talk this through.”

Zuko’s eyes are hopeful.

“Whatever,” Azula scoffs. She leaves Zuko with the washing up but she puts her plate in the sink.

She isn’t an _animal._

Ursa’s cloak is drawn tightly around her as they manoeuvre their way through the markets. Azula’s insides feel tangled. She has complicated memories of markets. Being abandoned and left to sit in the rain. Having a woman offer her kindness and fruit, then insight.

_Children don’t have to be perfect to be loved._

Urss walks briskly and smiles at vendors but does not engage anyone in conversation. She holds her head aloft, chin high and dignified. She keeps Azula close by her side. Azula hears the whispers that erupt in their wake, and slowly draws her own conclusions as to why Ursa is alone in that house. She looks repeatedly over her shoulder, waiting and watching for something, or some _one._ Azula almost tells her to stop it.

Azula fixates on walking with her mother. How close is she supposed to stand? Too far apart and it looks like they are strangers, leaving a sour impression on the voyeurs watching them. Too close, and Azula would be almost brushing shoulders with her mother. Does Azula walk a step ahead, or a step behind? They have no formal status or rankings here, nothing to help guide their interactions.

In the palace, whenever Azula faltered she could always count on court etiquette. There was always a correct method of greeting and walking and eating. Rules, rules, rules. Zuko finds it stifling, but Azula relies upon it to understand her position relative to everyone else. Ozai demanded she always know her place.

Now, she cannot find the correct way to talk to Ursa. Azula pinches the flesh of her hand. She should _know._ Beyond yelling and confrontation, beyond the fact of Ursa being her mother, Azula should know how to walk with a former Fire Lady.

A table of melons upturns across the street and Ursa grabs onto Azula’s hand, tugging her gently out of the way without so much as a glance. Azula looks at her mother. The lines of her face. Ursa doesn’t look back even once, but she points out stalls she thinks Azula might like whenever they pass.

“This stall has wonderful persimmons,” Ursa suggests, idly tracing a path through the people. “We could even make desserts from them.”

Azula hates that she perks up at the thought. Ursa notices. She stops in front of the stall and requests a bundle of the fruits, then secures it into the shopping bags Ursa alone carries.

“This is for all of us,” Ursa explains before Azula can object, arching an eyebrow. “We will all benefit from eating fruit today, don’t you think?”

“Not made into desserts,” Azula argues. Her eyes wander to the fruits.

Ursa shrugs. Azula is struck by her resemblance to Zuko like that, almost youthful and charming for one moment.

“One day of dessert won’t harm our health.”

Azula carefully remains silent. As they walk, she takes the bag of from Ursa. It cannot be taken away if Azula holds it herself.

Hira’a really is a tired little town. Azula kicks up dirt with each step, and the people seem perpetually dull and disinterested.

“It used to be a better place,” Ursa recalls. Her smile fades. “We had a theatre troupe, and sword dancers, and the markets were always so lively. Now there is almost nothing left.”

She finishes in a matter-of-fact tone, as if her statement is undeniable. Ursa turns away and Azula imagines the town she described. She imagines green plants and a road of actual stone, vivid theatre posters distributed around the town with sword dancers twirling their blades elegantly.

It would have been a place Zuko enjoyed. If they were raised here instead of the palace, would the town have remained the same? Would Zuko’s sword skills be praised instead of mocked? Would their mother be happy?

Even in the fantasy, Azula cannot imagine herself being happy here. She has only ever known the palace. It shaped her. Outside the palace and its cold certainty, Azula withers. She needs the strict rules and routines. Azula could never have been happy being merely fifth in line to the throne, summering on Ember Island and perhaps visiting Hira’a when Ursa grew homesick. That was never her life.

Azula would not trade her life, even with its barbarous hooks and claws, for an idyllic fantasy. She wants to go back to the palace and drag Zuko with her, but mother is still here. Zuko still needs answers. Azula exhales slowly, because she must remain here until Zuko is satisfied. Her brother needs support.

“The school is a proper school.” Ursa moves Azula out of the way of a man with a cart, then points to a house near the fringe of the markets. “There. Run by a widowed woman, I believe. All the children on the island attend. They teach mostly firebending and agricultural studies."

“I don’t want to go.”

Ursa sighs. “You don’t have to, Azula. I am only suggesting that if you were enrolled there for a matter of days, it could help avoid any speculation as to your identity. Or Zuko’s.”

“Half the island must know we are your children, by now.” Azula finds herself abruptly bored. She swings her arms like a child, then scolds herself.

“They know _Zuko_ is my child, but they do not know about you. Nor do they know your names. If we called you both something else, and said you were a cousin here to look at education in Hira’a-‘

 _It’s smart,_ Azula admits. A logical plan with a logical ruse. It would buy time for Zuko to conclude his business with Ursa, and allow for a modicum of privacy. But it requires acknowledging Zuko as her blood, while Azula is relegated to the role of a distant cousin. A foundling child.

Azula watches her mother slowly smile at a flower vendor who catches her attention, tucking her hair behind her ear and moving closer to inspect not the flowers, but the seeds. Ursa cares about beginnings. Azula only cares about the end. This will never work. Not just the plan. _Everything._

Carefully concealing her face from her mother, Azula turns on her heel and returns to the house. She slams the door shut.

"It's not a bad plan and you know it," Zuko accuses, pointing his spoon at her over their twin bowls of persimmon and custard tarts. 

Azula hunkers furiously into her seat. That is what infuriates her. She knows her thoughts are not logical, that her resistance is purely emotional, but she still does not want to attend school in some dinky little town.

The last time Azula was enrolled in school, it was the nation's finest all-girls academy. She was quickly bullied. Azula sincerely believed it was jealousy - that they hated her bespoke robes, her prowess with bending, her royal status. Maybe that is true. But Azula has since learned that there a great number of reasons why they could have bullied her. Mai and Ty Lee's departure made that clear.

The sun wavers in the sky, casting alternating stripes of red and yellow. Azula is suddenly tired of fighting. Against her mother, against the ministers, against what people want for her. Maybe, just this once, it is easier to give in. 

Mother offered her a choice. Mother gave her persimmon tarts and a gentle stroke of her hair. She is not the person Azula remembers, clinging to decorum and etiquette at all times. She _laughs._ She shrugs and walks into the kitchen exhausted of a morning, and she gets frazzled when something burns, and she smiles at the flowers growing in her garden.

Azula bites into the persimmon tart. It tastes sweet, like the blended nectar drinks the staff made for her when she was recovering after the coup. It tastes of comfort. 

When they departed from Caldera, Azula decided her role was whatever was necessary. No one expected anything from her anymore. She had nothing to lose. She still doesn't. Mother's plan was not concocted from fear or hatred, but apprehension. Discovering the Fire Lord and the Regent in a backwater town will do no good for anyone. 

Still, Azula is afraid. What if Ursa prefers the idea of having only one child? What if Zuko, too, grows accustomed to thinking of her as merely a distant cousin? What if the ministers catch wind and demand she stay here, living out a life of mediocrity as the former Fire Lord?

The old Azula would have preferred death to the idea of being average for the rest of her life. She is no longer as cunning and ambitious, as ruthlessly efficient as she once was. Kindness ruined her.

Now, Azula only sighs through the terrible feeling settling into her gut. The worst case scenario is that she visits Toph's metalbending academy sooner that expected, and Toph gains a new boarder. Azula has people she can rely on. She isn't alone anymore - Suki proved that well over a year ago, when she pressed her most trusted fan into Azula's hands, rather than leave an enemy alone on an empty cliffside.

There are always options. Azula spoons more tart into her mouth and tells Zuko she will attend the school. 

"Just for a few days," she amends hastily.

Zuko smiles widely. "You're finally starting to trust mom again."

That? Azula isn't so sure. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year!!!!  
> i imagine once i finally finish this series i can get some S L E E P


	8. quarter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quarter moon - the Moon illuminated by the Sun, half in darkness, in the shade of its own
> 
> we will get wholesome Azula at school content, but not today my friends. not today.

“Have a good first day of school,” Zuko says brightly.

She scowls at him. His smile refuses to falter. She begrudgingly allows Zuko to fuss, ensuring she has all the necessary school supplies, along with a packed lunch he tried and failed three times to make. Eventually, he succeeded.

he

“I _can_ cook,” he argued when Azula suggested he avoid the kitchen. “I’m just not used to caring about taste!”

“You mean you were happy to choke down bland, charred food before me,” Azula retorted. Zuko couldn’t argue.

Azula reaches and fixes her hair. Her scowl deepens. It isn’t her usual topknot, or even a braid like Zuko occasionally sports now. Hair is not honour but Azula should still take pride in her appearance. The tangled mess she feels? Is _not_ worthy of dignifying her head.

Ursa said it is a traditional looping hairstyle that was popular in her youth. She looked at Zuko, who looked back and shrugged. If it traditional, then it shouldn’t be out of style yet…?

Azula tugs down her tunic. She hasn’t been in school for five years. It irks her to think that she has to follow orders once more, pretending that she could not have them all executed or exiled if she wished. Azula is their _Fire Lord._ They owe her allegiance. Now she has to suffer through Zuko critically scanning her uniform for wrinkles- infinitely more careful than if it had been him going to school.

“Why not go?” Azula asks him, interrupting his fussing. “You would probably enjoy it.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Zuko’s focus goes somewhere distant. He holds his hands loosely by his side. “I was never very good at taking orders. You remember, I didn’t do well in school. Then I didn’t do well at being a commander. I know my path, Azula. It isn’t with other people.”

“You are regent,” Azula points out. She folds her arms and frowns. “You say you aren’t good with people, but I remember it being _you_ who won the Avatar’s trust, and you who won the people’s support for our new reign.”

She feels no discomfort calling it their reign. Azula would never have made it this far without Zuko. Some days, she resents all that she did not do. She resents what she could not become and achieve. If father had not exiled her-

No. If he had not betrayed her trust and cast her adrift, Azula would still have fallen. She read a story, once. A temple consumed by strangler vines, the plants slowly, year by year, constricting the pillars until they crumbled. Azula was not destined for greatness. She was destined for collapse. Burning candles well into the night, training until her hands lost sensation. It would never make her better.

Azula could have become so many things. If she was born to a family that supported her. If mother never left. If father didn’t contort her into something monstrous, then abandon everything on the night of the comet. After everything- the exile, the illness, the dreams that plagued her nightly after watching Ozai scream for death- Azula can never be the same. Perhaps she will never be what she could have become. Will never reach her full potential. It burns through her brain and stirs her heart, but Azula cannot control her circumstances. She cannot regret what she is not. Only what she is.

Zuko helped her to the throne then helped her keep it. She has not reigned alone. He was there during every step, every fall, every struggle.

Zuko half-smiles, wry as ever. “I don’t understand people, Azula. Not the way that you do. I’m trying, but it’s hard.” He sighs. “I still have a long way to go. I might not ever reach there.”

He was always vulnerable to the plans concocted by various ministers. Zuko never learned to read their intentions. He reached blindly, hoping that someone would meet him on the other end. They never did. He came to accept that, until Azula began sitting in on meetings and whispering under her breath, arching her eyebrows at any minister who dared question Zuko. Only she got to do that. Whether she thought Zuko’s decisions stupid or not, he was ruling on her behalf. They had to maintain a cohesive front. Azula always found a way to quietly reverse some of Zuko’s more unrealistic bills, anyway. Keeping the peace. Azula knew exactly when to strike and when to retreat, while Zuko blundered ahead no matter the outcome.

Balance.

Her usual reaction to Zuko’s self-pitying moods that strike him when the moon wades is usually to send him to the gardens or foist him upon servants who will ensure he eats and sleeps. But there is none of that here. If Zuko is not dragged from this mood before it settles, their time here will become nothing more than a morose parade of memories. Faced with little option, Azula does something uncharacteristic:

She panics.

Azula punches him in the shoulder, channelling Toph’s voice in her head, and laughs boisterously. Zuko staggers back.

“ _Ow._ ” He rubs his shoulder and glowers upwards. “Azula, what the spirits?”

“Go to go I have school-“ she runs out the gates and leaves a bewildered Zuko behind. Moments later, she hears his voice calling.

“Don’t kill anyone! If you can’t be nice then just don’t be yourself!”

Azula laughs into her sleeve.

Ursa meets her by the road, expression calm and still like a lake on a windless night.

“I’ll guide you,” she says. She leads down the street without hearing Azula’s objections, forcing Azula to trail behind like a lost child.

Ursa eventually stops a street away from the school. She says nothing, knowing Azula will not listen. She only presses a handkerchief into Azula's hands and tells her good luck, lines around her eyes apparent as she smiles. Azula rips her hands away and forces herself to step inside the school. 

The principal of the school is indeed a woman. However, Ursa’s description stops there. Azula had expected an elderly woman, as a widow. The person before her is young, her hair upbraided but her expression unusually severe. There is a story there. Written into the lines of her youthful face, youth juxtaposed with experience.

“Welcome to the academy,” she says plainly. “I hope you shall enjoy your time here.”

There are no false smiles. The principal only stares placidly, her hands in her sleeves. When she turns to show Azula inside, there is a wide streaking scar that ripples up the length of her neck and curls over her ear. She makes no move to hide it.

Azula narrows her eyes _. Weakness._ Everyone has one, and Azula just found the principal’s. It will give her power later.

The principal points out the twin classrooms, each positioned on opposite sides of the corridor. Azula studies the layout and realises they were personal chambers, once. She keeps her eyes sharp as the principal continues her tour, sighting more relics from an unlived future. A children’s toy sitting upon a high, dusty shelf. The kitchen, renovated to serve a classroom of children. Even the gardens bear a distinctly personal touch. The principal’s hand is everywhere.

What must it cost? To give that much of yourself away? Azula shudders to think ever leaving that much of a trace.

The principal finally stops. “Our school is a welcoming one,” she assures Azula with a level expression. “I know each of the children and their parents. Should any issues arise, I have it resolved before they can return home of a day. I find children are motivated to behave when their parents leave the markets to scold them.”

Azula nearly smiles. A glimmer of steel. Not much, and hardly visible, but present. Azula’s mind automatically begins screening possible plans – to get on the principal’s side, to alienate her, to get Azula kicked out of the academy, to get her enshrined. It used to be necessary. The plans. Having a method for dealing with every possible scenario. Now, Azula simply does it for a mental exercise. The ministers are too predictable for any real fun.

They walk to the classroom. Azula surveys the faces tucked inside the room, then breathes as she pushes the door open. She can do this. It’s for Zuko. Everything is for Zuko.

The staring faces immediately set her one edge, nails clawing down a water pipe. It is familiar. Far too familiar for comfort. Azula forgot how much she detested being with people of her own age.

Bullying was never how it appeared in the dramas and theatre scrolls Zuko and mother so loved. In the theatre scrolls, they narrated dramatic courtyard confrontations. Bullying on the basis of class and ability, pushing others down or cutting their hair in-between classes. It was never that way for Azula. She was the highest ranking and the most talented at bending. There were no dramatic scenes – only persistent, unbudging rumours that steadily built walls between Azula and her peers. A wall that grew taller each day, until Azula found herself alone. Shut out from every social circle.

They stole her ink brushes on occasion. Never when Azula could see, and they denied it when she asked. But no one was willing to lend her another. Their snickers revealed all.

Azula was the last picked for every group project or team sport. She was the best. They all knew she was the best, yet they left her to languish on the sidelines.

“You’re too aggressive,” they said. “You hog the ball all the time.”

Then they refused to pass to her no matter how hard she tried.

Her experiences with bullying were not comprised of malice and physical fights. It was isolation. The icy wind blowing Azula to the fringes of every conversation, winter stretching between them. She tried demanding they befriend her. Then she tried threatening. When none of that worked, she bribed and beguiled and used her most sugary-sweet tone, but the other girls either cried or sneered at the falsehood. Azula took to studying alone in the classroom while they played. Her teacher asked, once, if she would prefer drawing paper, or to join in with the other children.

She never asked again. Azula resumed tracing characters into the paper, diligently copying down the names of past rulers.

Eventually, Ty Lee enrolled in the academy. She bounded inside with her bright smile and infectious cheer, and Azula saw how the other girls flocked to her. She was jealous. Then when Ty Lee showed off her acrobatic skills and proud family pedigree, loudly declaring her entire family had unique talents, Azula saw _opportunity._

The girls envied Ty Lee for her talent and charm, and her seemingly effortless attraction of boys from the surrounding neighbourhood. All it took was one moment to turn envy to malice. Ty Lee changed from being the pretty new girl to the lonesome acrobat freak. People’s minds are ever-so-fickle.

Azula approached Ty Lee and drew her close. Ty Lee was grateful. Azula didn’t see her as yet another daughter in the clan, or a freak. She was someone useful. Someone to be praised, in return for loyalty.

Mai was even easier. Her parents _wanted_ her to make acquaintances of Azula, after hearing how she took Ty Lee under her wing. She stood with her books after class and told Azula, in a passably nonchalant tone she would soon learn to weaponise, that they were going to be friends. Azula pretended to think, while Ty Lee begged her to let Mai join their circle. That was the beauty of it – Azula now had a _circle._ She was the one alienating others, rather than being alienated.

She allowed Mai to join. Azula told them she would protect them, that she alone could keep the relentless rumours at bay. She said she would ensure no one would talk badly about them or block them from joining group training and play. They became a trio – more deadly by the day. But back then, it wasn’t about training. Training was only an expectation from their parents. What they did, what they dreamed, was Ty Lee teaching them how to make flower crowns, and Mai showing Azula how to properly form characters rather than tracing like the others, and Azula inviting them to the palace after school each day.

They were friends. For a time, they were friends. Azula doesn’t know when the resentment began. Perhaps it was when Azula first saw the war creep nearer, cousin Lu Ten following his father to Ba Sing Se and hearing all the ministers whisper that Ozai could take his place in line if Lu Ten died. Perhaps it was when she emerged from the customary mourning period- turned double- with no grandfather and no cousin, but a father on the throne who told her she was now second in line. _Forget Zuko._ Or perhaps it is when mother left and everyone turned their eyes upon her, expecting her to prove she was not weak like her mother.

Azula despised weakness. Half her family died or disappeared because they kneeled. She resolved not to make the same mistake.

Somewhere in the midst, Azula became sharper. She started striking with her words, aiming to hurt, and twisting Mai and Ty Lee around her fingers. Father said she needed allies. Not friends- allies. He made the distinction clear.

Allies are controlled by fear. That means they will stay, so long as they are afraid. Friends will leave for no reason at all.

Azula looks around the classroom now and sees _children._ Not threats. They lost that potential years ago. Once the initial startlement passes, Azula finds herself scoffing at them. These people cannot hurt her. They doze off while the teacher talks and scrawl drawings in the margins of their notebooks, while Azula sits with perfect posture and perfect attentiveness. To respect your teacher is to respect oneself. Clearly, they were never taught that.

They are _lazy._ Sloppy and tardy and afraid of nothing. Not punishment nor the wrath of their parents. Is this what schools have become? Azula should review the educational system.

The classroom teacher seated her towards the back of the classroom in the very centre of the row. A position where Azula can neither make trouble nor shine. It feels like probation. The teacher’s strained smile reveals more than she intends, and Azula’s smile is carefully calculated in response.

She leans back. She could have the school under her control in a day. The girl sitting in the corner is clearly the head figure here, surrounded by classmates slipping her notes and giggling amongst themselves. Supplant her, and the rest would follow. Easy.

Azula frowns as she tries to think of how she would do it, tuning out the teacher’s mumblings about arithmetic that Azula learned when she was nine. Besting military and political leaders is easy. People only support them if the leaders support their interests – not out of any personal loyalty. It should be similar with this girl. She is the strongest and following her offers protection. All Azula has to do is prove herself stronger, then they will follow her rather than the girl. Azula can survive this school.

Survival mode is how she lives. Neither Azula nor Zuko have found a way otherwise. She imagines that someday, they will enter a room and not immediately form contingencies – Zuko hoping he can get through to them, Azula relying on her own ruthlessness to outweigh theirs. It is a vicious battle. There are no victors. They lost the possibility for that when Azulon died.

Laughter erupts from the front row. The teacher snaps at them, rapping her cane against the desks while they struggle to contain themselves. Ink drips onto the floor, the guilty culprits beaming proudly as they wipe ink off their faces and try to appear repentant.

It isn’t wartime anymore. Children can laugh and play pranks.

Suddenly, she resents them. She hates each and every one of them with their perfect smiles and perfect lives. They link hands when they go to food stalls after school, playing games together and skipping stones across water. School is not their lives. It is only an accompaniment to their lives. They care about having _fun,_ and enjoying themselves, and eating fresh shaved ice when it reaches the sticky summer months. They will look back at this time in their lives and remember what joyous memories they made. Not being groomed for war. Not being turned to a weapon. Not being bullied and excluded and focusing only on studies, only on training, because it provided an escape and a slim chance to be loved. By her peers and her father.

Azula will look back and feel only regret. Missed chances and missed connections. Her fate was doomed from the start. Royals never get normal lives. Especially not teenage Fire Lords.

She misses Mai and Ty Lee. They were the only ones who ever understood her feelings of otherness. Of being trapped just outside a wall, clear as water, pounding desperately against the bricks. She could _see_ her peers. She could see the fun they had, the friends they made. She could see everything but she still could not pass through the wall, perpetually secluded from normality.

There is no place for Azula in the normal world. She understood that a long time ago. If Zuko had challenged her for the throne and cast her outside the palace, rather than stepping aside for her to be Fire Lord, Azula knows she would not have lasted. There is no use for people like Azula after a war. The fighting has ended. Nobody wants to be reminded of the monsters that helped curate plans in War Rooms, even if the name has been changed to Room of Peace. 

Azula has a particular skill set. She entered the classroom and rather than seeing the chance to start anew, to make friends and experience a normal school life, she instead planned the downfall of a teenage girl. What was done to Azula cannot be undone. She cannot be remade into someone normal. Someone without a warmonger for a father.

Her mother's handkerchief weighs heavily in her pocket. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe. One week. That is all she has to endure. One week of school, of Ursa’s company, then she can escort Zuko back to the palace and everything will be okay. It has to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you really think this was going to be a happy chapter? with my writing? really?  
> once again this was pretty much unedited because i wanted to get rid of it, but it should be okay i think. i didn't see any typos at least


	9. phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i picked 'phase' because it was funny in a "fuck you mom it's not a phase" kind of way and also because it becomes extra funny with the context of Azula being a lesbian disaster, which we all know is not a phase at all
> 
> i'm very tir e d folks

There is no pledge of allegiance, thankfully.

Zuko was insistent that the pledge be removed. Azula argued that it was important to instil fealty into their subjects.

“Why else would they follow us?”

Zuko only shook his head. “We don’t need fear. We never have.”

That settled everything. Zuko made the decision and Azula followed along, mitigating the damage. She doesn’t feel like a ruler sometimes. Only a sister on perpetual clean-up duty.

Schools no longer pledge allegiance at the beginning of each day. But upon Azula’s insistence, there is a symbolic gesture of loyalty towards peace. Each upturn their palms before the lesson and drone the Fire Nation’s new motto. The empty palms show a lack of weapons, or flames. A willingness towards peace.

Azula can’t quite contain her smirk when the class stand for the show. Her ideas in action. Zuko is the idealist, and Azula gets things done. He called the pledge of allegiance _brainwashing._ Azula called it smart. Say something enough times, day in and day out, and it becomes truth in your mind.

She does agree that perhaps, there could be less emphasis on the divinity of the throne and the Fire Lord. Azula loved hearing those stories when she was young. Evidence that she was superior to all the busybodies who whispered behind her back and laughed because she was the strange, fumbling princess. She wanted to be the most important. The most powerful. It seems silly, to try and phrase now. But Azula thought that if she remained at the top of the pyramid, no one could ever drag her down. She could have the best from life and the best of her father’s attentions, and she would never, ever be doubted again. Everyone would know that Azula deserved acknowledgment.

Now, she thinks only that she is very tired, and the crown very heavy. Let them realise that Fire Lords are not divine. Let them rebel, should they choose. Azula would welcome the challenge. She is not the reincarnation of a primordial spirit, nor the inventor of a new subset of bending, or the first to lead her warriors to war in centuries. Azula is human. Begrudgingly, bitterly human.

The ministers can share the responsibility for the dynasty. Azula agreed to remove the pledge of allegiance, Zuko’s eyes glowing yellow like coals, and instead petitioned for the show of peace. Zuko adored it. He thought it a fitting touch – the perfect symbol for their new reign. Azula quietly thought that it would be the perfect replacement. Instilling the same mindless loyalty, only to a new ideal. Peace would become the new unquestionable normal. Azula has read enough propaganda to understand its inner workings, how it spreads through the populace from between water wells.

Azula’s skills may not be approved of, but no one can deny their effectiveness.

She stands with the class and dutifully opens her palms, looking towards the sky as she recites the importance of peace. Zuko wrote the lines. He spoke with Aang and Katara on one of their numerous visits, asking for advice. The duo supplied enough flowery, philosophical lines that Zuko had no trouble drafting the new pledge. Azula still snickers at the memory.

Students from the back laugh conspicuously. Azula turns her head and narrows her eyes, summoning her imperious glare. They falter but soon resume their laughter, pointing silently at her and making rude gestures. Azula flexes her hands and feels blood rushing to her head.

The teacher puts an end to it with two strokes of the cane to the back of their hands each and sends them outside to the principal.

Azula smirks. Justice is well and good, truly, but sometimes revenge is more satisfying to watch. She doesn’t have to pretend to be the wise and judicious leader of the nation here. She can be herself – as much as possible when undercover. And Azula likes seeing the rude and the unruly brought back underhand. Her world operates in a particular order and any disruption to the system is not tolerated.

The teacher is a mouse who needs to learn to be a dragon, but Azula suddenly feels a rush of affection for her. The grating in her ears stops. In the palace, Azula can punish anyone as she likes, provided it does not cross political wires. She could have a maid stand in a bucket of freezing water, or a courier kneel on the cobblestones. She doesn’t hesitate, if they deserve it. Plotting against her or bullying others. But Azula has found she has no taste for punishment. She does not enjoy it, and neither does Zuko. What she cares for is _discipline,_ which is not so easily taught. Control of yourself and your actions.

Zuko works on gaining the staff’s affections, while Azula works on gaining their respect. Both seem insurmountable tasks. They grow closer each day.

Azula’s arrival had interrupted their mathematics lesson. The teacher continued, then elected to restart the pledge. A policy Azula also instated. Each student must recite it once per day. With the lesson completed and the pledge over, the teacher dismisses them for lunch.

What a foreign concept. Azula isn’t accustomed to being given permission to leave a room, or to eat. For a moment it chafes. Azula can eat whatever she wants, when she wants, and she can walk freely. She overthrew her father and crowned herself. She could have the teacher executed on the spot, should she wish.

Azula breathes shallowly through her nose. These are just thoughts. Meaningless and empty. She doesn’t actually want to punish the teacher. She knows the importance of routine. These people are unaware that their Fire Lord is in their midst. They cannot be blamed, however much Azula’s chest sparks with panic at the thought that they will try to restrict her.

Once, Azula was too slow in a lesson. Hunger. They waited until she sat down to eat then threw her plate away in front of her. Azula was never slow again. She learned to conceal her hunger instead of waiting ravenously for food. 

Azula watches the trickle of students heading towards the lunch service. The kitchen is cramped but well-equipped. A few unfamiliar women work together, each stepping around each other with practiced ease in the tight space. It isn’t a small house. Not by any means. The principal must have money or a title, to be able to afford running a school and hiring cooks. There are still maybe three classes worth of students to Azula’s trained eye, but they mix together in the hallway as they wait.

“There’s an eating area,” one briefly explains to Azula. “Take a tray, get your food, then go outside with all the tables.”

Azula looks away. She doesn’t need anybody to tell her the ways of the world. She can do this by herself.

She spots a girl from her class nearby. Azula strains, trying to place position to face. It strikes her. The girl is the centre of the class, if not the school. She is the leader. The top figure. Azula’s next target, to be so unfortunate.

Shame. The girl is almost pretty. Her hair is curled – an unusual trait for a person from the Fire Nation, perhaps indicating a move from the colonies despite her lack of accent. Her eyes are dark and observant. Azula watches her move without hesitation, a studied casualness to her gestures that belies years of effort. Azula feels a twinge inside her gut and thinks, _I am jealous. This is what jealousy feels like._

She felt it for Ty Lee too. That pull inside her gut that whispered that the other girl was pretty. Too pretty. Prettier than Azula, her smile almost too saccharine sweet to bear. Azula controlled Ty Lee and she restricted her smiles. It hurt less.

The girl notices Azula.

“What is your name?” she asks, remaining in place and surveying Azula calmly. “You’re new.”

Azula should roll her eyes at the obviousness of the statement, but her heart hammers a little too hard inside her chest. She scowls internally.

“… Azumi.”

The girl nods. “I’m Ezume. You can sit with us if you want.”

Ezume quirks an eyebrow, still with that impassive expression. It is difficult to read her. Azula detests being at a disadvantage. But something catches her attention. She narrows her eyes.

The girl speaks with the distinctive manner of the upper class. Not nobility— not quite. But closer than Azula has heard on Hira’a so far, including from her mother. She needs more information for her attack. It is best to play along.

Azula follows with her lunch tray. Ezume doesn’t look back once, only forging ahead with her friends tagging along, each not paying Azula any mind. They clump together in the hallway gather their food quickly, without thought– _Azula whispers a hurried thank you to the staff, because she has learned it is the best way to get more food_ – then spill out into the courtyard. Ezume pulls Azula by the arm and gestures for her to sit next to her. Once Azula is seated, Ezume’s focus returns to the other girls.

Still, Ezume chose Azula to sit by her side. The disgruntled expression of the only girl still remaining standing indicates this is not a usual occurrence.

Pleasure curls inside her chest. Ezume recognised Azula as a kindred spirit. Someone of her own calibre. The game is far from over, and Azula still has obstacles to climb, but the girl has let her guard down. She made the mistake of letting Azula inside. The group is already splintering from Ezume’s own mistake. Now Azula has everything she needs to take her down.

Azula considers the other girls. Each of varying heights and builds, some carrying sports gear and others holding rouge and lip brushes. One openly props her textbook on the table, reading ahead for the next lesson. Azula almost joins her. Studying was an expectation of Azula – she had to get the best marks, rank the highest, prove her family’s status. Azula studied until her eyes burned, then she wrote out notes until her hand cramped. She lived with a perpetual tremor in her hand for a year until the healers intervened. The only reason they did so was because Ozai feared it could harm her firebending training.

Eventually, studying became a half-comfort. Not something she chose from her own will, but something that came easily to her. Organising her notes was easier than obsessing over the latest kata Lo and Li tried teaching her, or the fact that her lightning was still barely sparks. Azula liked military history. She liked learning new tactics and understanding the same basic patterns repeating endlessly. Culture changes, but people do not. The palace was ever-shifting but Azula could look around her and connect each dilemma to footnotes in her textbooks. Like a manual. Her own personal guide to understanding people’s grudges and motivations, and it could never be copied or burned because it was not a contained within a single volume. It was all stored inside her head.

Azula tries to bury those thoughts. Jealously eyeing the girl’s textbook is not the way to move forward here. Popular girls aren’t know-it-alls. Azula learned that the hard way. She needs to proceed carefully, and watch until she knows how Ezume manages her sphere of influence. Anyone who does not conform will be culled. Azula was never so particular about managing her own group, but she never had as many allies as Ezume does.

She swallows down the hurt. Mai and Ty Lee are happy now. Azula got what she wanted – the throne. They should all be happy separately. Now Azula must focus on dominating the social order of this school, so she can survive, so she can prove to herself that she can function outside the palace, so Zuko can think she made friends and be proud.

Azula’s life would be much easier if she didn’t care about Zuko. It is why she was banished in the first place. She imagines Zuko feels similarly. He cares too much about everyone. Recruits, farmers, peasants. It would be easier if he did not care so much. Father banished him for that too. Caring is weakness, but Azula is not willing to give it up. Somehow, she thinks it would take more effort to return to her old, callous self then it would to progress with her new one.

She’s been infected with _feelings._ The thought makes her cold inside. She sips at her water with one eye on Ezume to cover it up. Azula cannot go back to not caring, even if she tried. Her mind refuses to listen to her heart.

What will happen to Ezume if Azula supplants her? Azula is leaving before long. Would Ezume be left drifting without status or power in the school?

Azula tries to rationalise. It is only a small school, really, in an even smaller town. Ezume cannot lose all her influence that quickly. It makes her a dangerous opponent, but Azula is confident in her eventual victory. Ezume will be fine. Azula will claw to the top then plunge everything into freefall when she leaves, and equilibrium will return.

Part of her wonders if she should just keep her head down. Do her work quietly and speak only when spoken to. The week would pass slowly, but manageably. Zuko wouldn’t argue. Mother wouldn’t, either. Azula would be able to leave Hira’a knowing she upheld her end of the bargain, and nobody in the school would miss the strange new girl.

Azula’s pride outweighs everything. Not always. Not when it is important. But the stakes are low here – high reward and no risk. Why not play a little game? Why not see how smoothly she can integrate herself into the school?

Technically, she can call it research. They have a review of the curriculum scheduled next month, to evaluate if the changes were implemented effectively. It counts as work, she tells herself.

Azula looks at Ezume. The girl catches her eye in return and smiles. It isn’t a warm smile like Suki or Katara’s, nor is it boisterous like Toph’s or awkward like Zuko’s. Ezume smiles like someone with nothing to hide. Nothing to lose. A girl who has always been on top.

That used to be Azula. Invincible. Untouchable. Then father arrested and banished her. Azula crumbled into something unrecognisable. The only comfort is that he didn’t banish her until she had already fled the country with Zuko. She couldn’t have stomached it if there were witnesses.

Ezume is perhaps what Azula could have been. Shining, confident. Surrounded by friends and clearly adored. Azula reaches for her food but it has no taste. She chews and chews on her bread until it turns to mush but makes no move to swallow, merely allowing it to sit heavily on her tongue.

The other girls hadn’t eaten much. Azula served herself by far the heaviest portion. She regrets it now. Is Ezume judging her? Smirking to herself when Azula looks elsewhere? Azula doubts that Ezume ever starved or over-trained like Azula did. No one has any idea how hard it is to eat normally now. Azula should _know_ what normal is, but she cannot recall a time where food wasn’t being taken or piled onto her plate at a whim. Her mealtimes changed daily. How could she learn how much to eat in a day, what to eat in a day, if it was inconsistent from even when she was a child?

Azula self-consciously slows her eating, then feels a sharp prickle of annoyance. She straightens her back. Azula shouldn’t give in to this emotion. Ezume, if she is judging Azula, has no right. Azula will accept criticism from her only if her life parallels Azula’s, which she finds unlikely.

Lunch passes in relative silence. The other girls chatter and laugh amongst themselves, while Azula observes. Ezume once turns to Azula and asks her where she is from, to which Azula lies through her teeth with _Lahar._ Ezume stares for a long moment that has Azula smiling innocently, eyes wide, but eventually accepts it.

“Okay, Azum from Lahar.” Ezume leans back in her chair, still maintaining enviable posture. “We have agriculture lessons after lunch ends.”

The bell rings. Azula’s spirits sink like a stone. She scowls at the bell that the teacher holds aloft, shaking it like a woman possessed.

Ezume smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Come on. I’ll take care of you.”

Azula has no reason to trust Ezume. The other girl is uncaring to the point of callousness, and has given Azula absolutely no reason to think that Ezume will take care of her.

When Azula was seven, her mother read her a story about a lizard-frog. It had a scorpion-spider friend that needed help being carried across a river. _Trust me,_ the scorpion-spider said, so the lizard-frog took his friend upon his back. When they reached halfway across the river, the scorpion-spider stung his friend and they both drowned. The end.

The moral was supposed to be that those with wicked natures will always act wickedly. Their actions speak for themselves. Azula was welcomed to the school and instantly began trying to pull the network apart, because that is her nature. What has Ezume done? Laughed in class then shushed her friends. Invited Azula to lunch. Asked polite questions and told Azula their timetable. Ezume’s actions are not aligned with her meaning– the fake smile told Azula as much– but there is nothing to suggest that Ezume is targeting Azula the way that Azula is to her.

Wicked natures and wicked words. Azula has demonstrated both since her arrival. Ezume is a fox with something up her sleeve, but nothing in her nature seems inherently sinister. She would have harmed Azula by now if that was the case.

Ezume looks over her shoulder at Azula dawdling in the corridor and smiles, properly this time. Her teeth are oddly white.

“You’ll hate agriculture,” Ezume pronounces loudly, and Azula stares after her in a daze.

She has no doubt about agriculture. Zuko would laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm very tiredd because it is 2am where i am but i stayed up to write this. idk enjoy i hope. why edit when you can just dump hot garbage right into people's hands?  
> (btw i realised afterwards that some people might think OC Ezume and future-daughter-of-Zuko Izumi have the same name. they don't. they are each pronounced differently. Ezume = eh - zoo - may, i think from sounding it out. if it becomes a problem i'll change her name lol.)
> 
> where is this fic headed? i have no idea, but boy am i having fun projecting all my issues onto this fic and also introducing a random character just for SpiceTM. (kidding, i do have a reason. give it time though, i'm playing the long game here. i guarantee it is not headed where you think it is.)


	10. the beach episode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the beach episode - i think i'm very funny and couldn't resist messing up the theme. no foreshadowing here to be seen. none at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when you accidentally start writing the end of the story instead of the chapter you were supposed to post days ago. oops?  
> i may make some people very angry with the ending of the story or very sad, but either way i think it matches with what i had planned last year when i started writing "we'll burn that bridge when we get to it". the roadmap has changed a lot but this is still the essence of what i wanted, so i hope i'll do it well once i get to post it.

Azula finds Ursa sitting on the lounge, weaving threads between her hands. Closer inspection reveals the ball of wool beside her. Azula steps on a floorboard and the creaking sound has Ursa’s head snapping upwards, then hurriedly stuffing the wool behind a pillow.

“How was school?” she asks with a forced smile. Azula notes the nervous entwining of her hands.

“It was fine.”

Azula is too tired for a fight. She walks past her mother and drops her bag on the floor. If Ursa wants to hide secret projects from Azula, then she will let her. Azula isn’t her mother’s keeper.

“Where’s Zuko?” she finally caves and asks after scanning the house and realising Zuko is nowhere to be seen. She wants her brother to check her palms, doing that stupid little trust fall. Azula isn’t sure that she can touch anything without burning it right now.

Ursa looks up. “He went to the market. We needed more rice flour.”

“Of course he did.” Azula rolls her eyes and marches to her room. She catches Ursa’s flinch as she slams the door and feels infuriated.

Azula isn’t going to hurt Ursa. No matter how angry she gets or how close the pressure is to bursting, Azula would never hurt her. Not only for Zuko, but because Azula is tired of being the person who hurts others. Ursa is safe with Azula. She is her _mother._ Does Ursa even care? Is she on edge around Azula because she would hurt Azula and expects the same willingness from her daughter?

Azula feels like she is grasping at straws. She doesn’t understand her mother. Ursa and Zuko have had many long talks in the garden since they arrived, but Ursa has only taken short walks with Azula or placed more food on her plate. They don’t talk. Ursa seems reluctant to rock the boat, and Azula is trying to leave as much room for Zuko as she can. This was _his_ trip. His time away from the throne that Azula felt too heavy to bear on her own. It was Azula’s fault for being too weak to handle it. If she had just managed by herself and let Zuko be free, then he wouldn’t have terrible migraines that rage long into the night.

This trip was Azula’s way of making amends. Somehow, she feels as though all she is doing is making things worse. She wants to scream.

Azula digs her test from her bag and looks at the mark branded across the parchment. She feels her hand twitching. Clenching around nothing, hoping for an object to crush. She tried not to look. She told herself that she would come straight home and sit with Zuko and not look at it. Her very first test at the stupid trial school. Now, she glares through the paper.

They failed her. They really failed her. She, the Fire Lord and the most prodigious student ever seen in the nation, actually failed a stupid test on some stupid backwater island too sparsely populated to even have a proper port.

Azula shakily tries to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. She carefully drops the paper before she crumples it and lets it float to the floor. Azula props herself against her desk and tries to think. She was at a disadvantage before she even began. New to the town, struggling with her mother, and focused more on social success than academics just to prove some old point to herself. Azula hasn’t studied the curriculum in years. She trained instead. It is understandable that she wouldn’t do well, that her mark would reflect poorly. She remembers her first days at the school as a blurred reel of anxiety. Of course she wouldn’t excel. She shouldn’t feel ashamed. Just like she shouldn’t feel ashamed that Ursa is still afraid of her, watching her hands more than her face.

Her nails dig into her palm and Azula takes another deep breath to avoid pummelling the desk. She takes the empty teacup on her desk and moves to the window where she can calm herself. If Zuko were home, he would brew her calming jasmine and sit with her until she collected herself enough to explain how she feels. Then he would sound out solutions with her until she either threw him out in laughter or they came up with a feasible plan to get back on track. Zuko would tell her that her grades don’t matter, that she has already proven herself a hundred times over. He would tell her that it is good she is making friends instead of trying to pass a test she could have done in her sleep, had she paid attention. Zuko would stop her from sabotaging herself to make her feel even worse.

But Zuko is not home.

Azula locates her mother with ease – sitting in the garden by her stupid fire lilies, still working on that mysterious project. She has her back to the door and the wool nestled between her fingers, still weaving back and forth. She hums to herself as she works. Azula stands, struck dumb by the innocuity of it. Azula was close to a breakdown in her room and her mother was outside _weaving._ Probably singing back to the birds and helping her flowers grow.

Like that, Azula realises what the core problem is.

Ursa didn’t protect her. She left Azula to rot in an empty old palace full of people who all claimed to know what was best for her _. Do this_ , they said, and Azula did. She trained and she bled and she stopped crying and feeling and eating, and eventually she lay awake at night watching the ceiling instead of sleeping. Azula stopped feeling like a person. Wondering endlessly what was wrong with her, then learning not to think at all unless it was about father’s new military plan.

The healers brewed her all sorts of teas to help her sleep. None of it worked. Eventually, one of the Fire Sages told her that it was not her body preventing her from sleeping. It was her mind.

Azula screamed and trained the entire day, forcing her body past the point of exhaustion, then blearily climbed the steps. She couldn’t keep her eyes open and she thought _perfect._ But when she carefully laid down in bed, her brain continued to whirr, refusing to let Azula switch off.

 _Machine._ She heard some of the other girls whispering, once. Then the court maids. Azula was inhuman – the way she moved, talked, stared. Humans stop for rest. Humans sleep. Humans feel remorse and humans apologise and humans don’t volunteer to raze a forest full of lumberjacks for no reason other than boredom.

 _No one was harmed,_ she tells herself. They proclaimed the forest property of the Fire Lord and raised pillars of fire until every single lumberjack fled from their work. The lumberjacks screamed watching the forest fall, but they were screams of fear and horror, not of the dying. But Azula didn’t _check._ She blustered blindly through the forest with her white-hot hands and _didn’t check._ Memory is unreliable. Azula doesn’t remember burning anyone, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And records can be forged.

Ursa let her live like that. While Azula was hiding from her own monstrous self, Ursa was living comfortably on her home island. Laughing with her neighbours, taking leisurely strolls through the markets, pruning her fire lilies. Ursa was happy while Azula spent three weeks with the healers and Zuko floundered at sea. Ursa didn’t once look back. She says she is sorry, she says she wants to make amends, but how can Azula trust her when she still doesn’t regret leaving? If Ursa had wanted them, she would have come back for them, or written, or _something._ But she didn’t. They weren’t enough for her, the same way they weren’t enough for Ozai.

Zuko is the only person Azula can trust. Not her mother. Not her father. Not Mai and Ty Lee, or Ezume, or the liars at school who claim to be her friends. There is no one who will help her.

Mother thought she was helping when she sent Azula to school. She said she wanted to help Azula avoid detection, and risk being sent back to the palace. Did mother really care? Or was she simply hoping for Azula to get out of her face, stuck at school each day and unable to remind Ursa of her failures?

Azula screams. She cannot help herself. Ursa immediately turns around, face blanched, and moves to Azula.

“Azula? What’s wrong? Are you-“ Ursa reaches to touch her shoulder but Azula recoils and blocks her hand. Ursa purses her lips, quietly concerned.

“I don’t want to see you,” Azula snarls. She deliberately steps into Ursa’s space, who tilts her head for extra height. Ursa isn’t much taller than Azula anymore.

When they were children, Azula and Zuko used to compete over this stupid bet. They each wanted to grow taller than their mother. Ursa always laughed and insisted that it was possible. Now Azula looks her mother nearly square in the eye, and realises without attachment she really did grow that tall.

"Azula, what is this? What are you after?" Ursa's voice is calm and level, as always, but there is an undeniable edge. Weakness.

"Just admit that you _liked_ leaving me and Zuko behind. That you were happy living alone on Hira'a with your new lover and your fancy house and garden."

"Azula, it wasn't like that." Ursa tries moving Azula backwards but she refuses to budge. "Trust me, sweetie. It wasn't like that."

"Oh yeah?" Azula smirks and leans closer. "Have you told Zuko how fast you left us behind for Ikem? Does he know about the letters you exchanged in the palace?"

Ursa's face turns ashen, then angry. "Don't you _dare_ threaten me, young lady! You have no idea what happened between us."

It is easier than setting off a forest fire. One deliberate spark leaves Azula watching their relationship be engulfed in flames. 

Zuko walks in and immediately stops.

“What are you two doing?” he demands, wading into the conflict. They ignore him.

“I buried my parents, Azula,” Ursa says sharply. Her eyes narrow. “I understand your anger. I do. I know that I let you down and that you can’t forgive me. But I wasn’t living luxuriously or peacefully or whatever it is that you think. My parents _died._ I helped cover them in soil. I lived every day afraid that Ozai would send for me or kill me. Ikem was the only person willing to stand by me.

So please, Azula. If you can’t forgive me, at least don’t create your own version of my story."

If Azula stays, she may actually kill Ursa. She punches through the wood of the table and escorts herself out the door. Zuko’s eyes follow her path, dejected.

No one follows.

Azula wanders. She has no other option. She kicks at the road as she walks and tries to cry without sound so that she doesn’t draw attention.

It’s hard. A few people pause to stare at her. Azula knows she must seem a mess, eyes swollen and shoulders shaking. She snaps at them to go away. When that fails, she tugs off her shoe and throws it. They scatter like fish in a pond.

Azula doesn’t need pity. She doesn’t need anyone. She wipes her face from snot and continues moving, trying to remain balanced. She passes through the markets then out the other side, moving down to the beach. She sits on the cold rocks and lets the wind knock at her back. There is no one else coming knocking for her.

Zuko must be occupied with mother. She doesn’t blame him. Her heart burns and she wants to pull the hair from her own head and wave it in front of him, victorious _– see, you can’t hurt me if I hurt myself! None of this ever mattered to me!_

What would be the point? Azula sinks from the rocks to the sand, drawn by the waves. She tries to find a pattern to the push-pull swaying. Katara always talked about how the moon powers the water, but there is no moon. Not yet. Only the eggshell yellow of the setting sun, glowing through the cracks.

Azula pulls her knees to her chest and counts the beats between each wave that pools on the shore. One-two-three goes the wave, then retreats. Azula idly wonders what the drumbeat would be. They could have a military parade. Just Azula, the ocean, and a few lonely crabs skittering across the san.

She rolls onto her back in the sand. Warmth seeps into her. The sand holds the rays of the sun, like a natural heat pack. She should have gone to the beach after training, all those years, rather than battling alone in the dark. Azula would have been happy by the beach. She could have relaxed. If she was anybody else, she could have relaxed. But Azula was never that child.

A thought strikes her. Azula picks up her feet and steps carefully into the water. It splashes around her, cold and dark. The sun wavers at her back. She remembers Suki’s lifetime from what feels like a lifetime ago. Azula still has the fan. Unbidden, she frowns. Then she steps defiantly further into the water. The water comes up to her chest, nearly lapping at her chin. She closes her eyes and sinks down.

“Hey!” a voice calls distantly.

Azula nearly resurfaces to respond but it would take too much effort. She lets herself sit underneath the waves. It feels calm, watching the water rush above her without impact. She can feel the current tugging her along.

Her lungs beg her for air, so Azula reluctantly floats to the surface. She leans back against the current and floats gently on her back. She hears a faint scuffling on the shore but ignores it. Everything feels different here. Azula isn’t the former prodigy who picks fights with her mother because she feels too horrible inside. Here, she couldn’t even light a spark should she want.

Sand impacts against her head and Azula splutters, caught off guard. She tastes sand in her mouth and dives beneath the water to shake it from her face and hair, then spits it out in disgust. Azula frantically combs out her hair then casts her most vicious glare to the girl who threw it.

“You have until I come back to shore, then you are _dead._ ”

There stands a dripping wet Ezume, her hair tangled around her shoulders and her hand on her hip. Her body language whispers _urgency, alarm._ It surges upwards like a well.

"Try it," Ezume retorts loudly. "I'll be right here by this rock."

Azula flounders. She hadn't expected Ezume. 

"Why did you throw sand at me?" she asks once they are both on shore and Azula is drying off. 

Ezume stares. "You mean you weren't-? Nevermind."

No matter how much Azula pries, Ezume refuses to reveal what she assumed. That Azula was dead, perhaps, although the very thought of Ezume flinging sand at what she thinks is a dead body sends Azula into peals of laughter. When Azula dies, it will be somewhere dignified. Not the beach. She can imagine the anxiety of the royal historians trying to spin _that_ into something epic worthy. Still, even if Ezume only threw sand, Azula enjoys the idea that in this life she has at least one person who would try and identify her body. Who would face their fear to see if she was okay. It speaks of more loyalty than most of Azula's ministers would show in a similar situation.

Azula resume bathing in the near-gone sun. She tries to find her former trance, but it eludes her. The waves are dark and lonely. Unappealing. The sand is cold and the rocks bold, unfriendly figures. Azula tries closing her eyes but the slim peace she found is gone. Ezume's company outshines everything. Now that she is here, Azula finds herself wanting to talk to her more than sitting by the beach. 

"What were you doing by the beach this late?" Azula prods, literally, at Ezume as she asks. 

Ezume shrugs away from Azula's fingers but otherwise doesn't move, nearly topping into the sand from the strange combination. Her face says that she recognises the irony, grim as she spits out the stray grains. Azula laughs, high and ugly. She immediately stops. 

Ezume's eyes twinkle. "No, go on. It'll give me a good story later. I throw sand at you then you laugh like you're possessed."

Azula raises a handful of sand mockingly. "Give me one more reason, Ezume. This sand is calling to you."

"Okay, okay. I concede." Ezume holds her hands peacefully. She settles back down and looks over at Azula. "But I should really be asking you that question. What were _you_ doing at the beach, if not what I thought?"

"Swimming," Azula deadpans, and watches the light die in Ezume's eyes. 

It feels strange. When they begin shivering in the cold, they clamber back over the rocks towards the town. Azula has never had someone her age do things with Azula just because. She looks sideways self-consciously. They aren't _friends._ Ezume has her own agenda - that much is clear. But away from school, out under the fading light, she seems more open. More herself, maybe. Like she has put aside an act even if only for the briefest of moments. Like this, Azula thinks they could be friends. 

Ezume slips on the rocks for the second time, skinning her knee. She laughs it off and pulls herself to her feet, but Azula rolls her eyes and tells Ezume to hold onto Azula's arm so she doesn't slip. Azula ignores the tingles spreading with the contact and chalks it up to the cold.

The closer they get to town, the more the magic disappears. Both find themselves dallying, trying to delay their return as long as possible. Azula knows why she doesn't want to go back - her mother. But why is the seemingly perfect Ezume just as reluctant? At school, she spoke like the entire world was hers and she was only playing chess. Her father is important in the town. Not the headman, but his second in command. Her mother sells jewellery by the entrance to the markets. If Azula could swap lives with anyone, she would pick Ezume. Top of every class with a crowd of adoring followers willing to blindly obey.

“Can we go to the fountain?” Ezume asks suddenly. She doesn’t move her head, staring straight ahead with something like fear. Her grip on Azula’s arm tightens. “Now, please.”

Azula obliges. Privately, she feels relieved. Another excuse to avoid Ursa and her brother. As they walk, Azula mentions that it would be easier if the town lanterns hadn't been extinguished already. But they are both still wet, so neither can bend like this. Azula steps around a particularly uneven stone to avoid tripping in the dark. 

"I'm a non-bender," Ezume says from nowhere. Her smile is almost bitter as she finally looks at Azula. "Unexpected, right?"

Azula tries to hide her surprise. The darkness helps. Ezume's facade is unravelling more and more tonight, but Azula knows that it will be back tomorrow. She is the same. Vulnerability is a mistake that must be paid for. Tomorrow, they will not be friends. They saw too much of each other's real faces. Ezume will not risk Azula ruining whatever game she is playing, and Azula cannot let someone who saw the Fire Lord floating mindlessly in the ocean continue to draw closer. 

But for now, the fountain. They reach blindly for it under the pale light of the moon and sit on the cold tiles. For a moment, Ezume seems to have something to say. It nearly unfurls on her tongue. Then she swallows it, silently bowing her head. She thinks Azula cannot see. Azula allows her the dignity of the illusion.

Friends, enemies, it is all the same for people like them. They are only different labels for the same pieces on the board. But as Azula thinks of the mess of her family situation, and the even worse mess awaiting her in the palace, she fervently wishes for someone who would stay by her side. A friend. Ezume nearly fits the bill – intelligent, ambitious, funny in a dark kind of way – but she has too many of her own secrets. Azula cannot manipulate or lie to her. Friendship with Ezume would tear them both open, their ugliness spilling out into the light. Neither would escape unscathed. It would reveal them down to the very marrow of their bones.

Everyone has their secrets. But Ezume and Azula, even as they breathe in the night air away from their families, each grateful for the temporary respite, know that they cannot release their masks. There is too much at stake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azula honey that's not what Ezume thought.
> 
> another note - keep in mind with this chapter that nothing is really clear-cut. we're dealing with generational trauma, and everyone in the house is dealing with the aftermath of years of abuse. all of them are allowed to feel however they feel, but some aren't expressing it in a healthy or productive way, and this applies to multiple people. Azula shouldn't have blown up at Ursa like that, and Ursa shouldn't have shut Azula down and dismissed her emotions. no one really acted in a good way here, but that's trauma. it's something they all have to work on and overcome together.  
> remember: anger isn't a bad emotion. being angry doesn't make you a bad person. but expressing it in a way that damages yourself or other people is unhealthy and should be worked upon asap. 
> 
> song of the day – cold cold cold by elephant of the cage


	11. mare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula writes a letter to her mother. She realises some things that were bothering her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mare - the idea that the dark areas of the moon's surface might be seas.
> 
> shorter chapter than normal bc i got stuck and needed to move on rather than forcing an unnatural extension of the chapter

It’s like this.

Azula has a box. She knows its shape, all its edges. She knows what is inside the box. But she keeps it hidden away so she cannot see it and be reminded. Because once you open the box, you cannot close it. You will forever remember its contents. But if you hide it, if you never open it, then you can pretend. Even if only for a little while.

When Azula was five, she fell in the garden and skinned her knee. She didn’t feel anything, at first. Then the pain swelled in waves and she realised _oh, I hurt myself._ Then she screamed until her mother came running after her.

Her relationship with Ezume is a little like that. Azula knows once she opens the box, once she unravels all of Ezume’s layers, she will find something she likes. An ally, maybe, if not a friend. When she saw Ezume standing soaked by the beach, another scoop of sand curled in her palm, the box rattled and demanded attention. But Azula cannot open it. The box has never been hers to open. People like Azula need to keep their boxes deep inside the dark.

Azula knows, logically, that she isn’t a bad person. She did and said terrible things. But she isn’t condemned to evil. People are never born that way. It is something they are beguiled and seduced into by promises of power, of control, or sometimes money. Her father slipped into the night because of his own greed.

Azula wanted to be loved, but she didn’t trust any affection that wasn’t controlled with her own hands. She claimed that Mai and Ty Lee were her allies, but she pushed and prodded until they reached their limit. It wasn’t enough that they loved her. Azula refused to believe them. She demanded _proof,_ then deluded herself that it wasn’t enough, that they were still lying.

Ozai descended smoothly, but Azula stumbled. Sharp jerking steps that left her off-balance. Then she couldn’t find her way back. Didn’t _want_ to find her way back. She blew out the lanterns because it was easier to believe that she never had a choice. That she was born in the dark, not that she went willingly.

Azula should apologise to her mother. The thought floats through her mind as she looks at Ezume, still sitting under the moonlight by the fountain. There are only so many chances one person receives. Azula feels that she has used all of them. _Escaping Ozai. Zuko’s return. Finding her mother again._

She reaches for the simmering anger sitting behind her ribs, and finds it cooling. It isn’t gone. Never gone. Azula’s words may have been exaggerated, but the feelings behind them were true. Azula really did feel abandoned by her mother. Left to rot like a broken doll. But she has followed this road with Ozai before. Danced over every dangerous stone. Azula cannot control what her mother did, but Ursa has at least offered the one thing Azula begged Ozai for over and over again until she bled beneath the sky—

Remorse. True, unmotivated remorse. Ursa regrets not being there. Azula tries to imagine what it must have been like for Ursa. If Azula been given the chance to escape, early on, would she have taken it? Even it meant leaving her brother and mother behind?

What if she knew she would be happy outside the palace, but also knew that it would condemn Mai and Ty Lee? Would Azula have thought twice? Or, like Ursa, would she have seized the chance to escape before it killed her?

They all make choices. Some are just more unpalatable to explanations, once the future comes knocking on the past’s door. Ursa could never have predicted what Ozai would put them through. Maybe, like Azula, she thought the problem was her. That she was the poison. That there was something inexplicably _wrong_ with her, making Ozai hurt her. Maybe she thought leaving would help. Maybe she knew it wouldn’t.

Azula doesn’t think she is ready to forgive Ursa. Not now. But someday, when it hurts less to think about. Isn’t this the dream scenario? Isn’t this what she wished for on those long nights of training? Her mother to swoop in and apologise and take her back, regretting everything?

She realises that if Ozai had ever felt sorry, Azula will still feel as she does now. Lost. Lonely. Unsure of herself and everyone around her, even with all the progress of the past two years.

When Azula first allowed them to take her father away, she woke with sticky sheets and clammy skin, terrified that she made a mistake. What if he finally repented? What if he finally wanted her back? She spiralled into a nervous storm thinking of all the ways he might call for her in the night, begging for his beloved daughter.

It never happened. Even as Azula paced her room and broke dishes, she knew it was all a horrible spike of anxiety. Now she has confirmation. One parent is sorry. The other isn’t. Why is it so hard to forgive one and not the other? Her anger should be directed at Ozai, not Ursa. Not the only parent that welcomed her again.

Azula tips her head back and swallows the realisation. It feels- safer, to be angry at Ursa. Her mother is unthreatening. However much she scolded and yelled at the palace, she was never physically intimidating. Even less so now. Azula has tested Ursa in every way possible. Refusing her tea, insulting her cooking, burning her garden and storming outside without permission. Throughout everything, Ursa has remained calm. She only reacted when Azula touched upon her dead parents.

Azula has found the boundary. She has found the line in the sand, the one thing Ursa won’t tolerate. She knows how far to push now. She could keep pushing, right until Ursa pushes back. But Azula won’t. She isn’t that person anymore. She is more than the manipulator and the liar the other girls called her. Azula is her own person. She isn’t confined by expectations anymore. Wasn’t that the whole point in coming to Hira’a?

Ursa will take Azula’s words and her anger. Ozai won’t. Weak as he is, he would still try and kill Azula if she ever insinuated that he abused her. That he ruined his children. Ozai cannot stand being questioned, having his authority mocked. Y _ou dare challenge me?_ he would roar, and rattle against the cell even without his bending.

Azula pushes her hands into her face and exhales. It isn’t Ursa she was mad at. For some things, yes. But not for all of it. Not truly. Everything always comes back to Ozai. No matter how hard Azula tries, no matter how far she runs, every road leads back to him.

He didn’t ruin her. She won’t force herself back into the role of victim and give him power over her by saying he ruined her life. Her childhood, definitely, but Azula is capable of directing her own life now. She can choose to let him contaminate her relationship with her mother the way he always did, or she can talk to Ursa.

 _Big girls use big words,_ Toph wrote once. It was mostly to mock Azula who confessed to acting first and explaining later, but it was also advice. If you don’t explain yourself, someone else will do it for you – and you may not like what they say.

Azula turns to Ezume. “Let’s go back,” she says quietly.

Ezume sighs. She slips off the fountain ledge and stretches.

“I wish we didn’t have to.”

Azula pretends not to understand. That is all she can do for Ezume.

They part ways almost immediately, Azula returning to her mother and Ezume taking her own meandering path. Possibly Ezume was lying and she won’t go back at all. But Azula has her own family to worry about. How can she fit someone else inside?

The door creaks as it opens. Azula winces, and immediately switches to high alert. She _feels_ Zuko’s eye roll like a physical presence, then he is guiding the lights back on with a spark on his finger and standing to greet her.

“Maybe be gentler with the door next time,” he suggests sarcastically.

Azula bristles only for a moment before he is reaching out to hug her.

They don’t _do_ hugs. Not like other siblings do. They have their own rituals that make up for it, and it’s fine. They don’t need to be like Sokka and Katara. Both of them are prickly and touch-averse at the best of times. But now, Azula sinks into the hug. Her brother welcoming her back even after she nearly ruined things again.

Azula wishes she was a better sister. It’s easy to take care of Toph, and send letters to Suki helping with her latest diplomatic issue on Kyoshi, but somehow it feels more difficult with Zuko.

“So,” Zuko says once the kettle is boiling and they have seated themselves on the lounge. “Where did you go after you walked out?”

Zuko’s eyes are curious but unjudging. It’s what she likes about him. Zuko has done every terrible thing imaginable, up to and including trying to kill the world’s last hope, then begging for said last hope to forgive him. Azula may have done bad things, but Zuzu has too. He cannot throw stones without bringing the whole glass house down. Azula feels safe talking to him.

“I went to the beach.” At Zuko’s slow blink of confusion, Azula rolls her eyes. “To _swim._ I’ve heard that some people enjoy it.”

“Okay, but why the beach?” Zuko tilts his head, still puzzling through her actions. “You could have gone anywhere. Usually you just walk around for an hour.”

Zuko is wrong, but Azula doesn’t bother correcting him. Back at the palace, Azula pretends to walk around so that Zuko doesn’t worry. Truthfully, she used to visit the dungeons. Not talking to her father. Just standing in the shadows beyond his cell so that he wouldn’t notice her presence.

“I don’t know, Zuko. I just wanted some quiet.”

Zuko finally shrugs and moves to pour the tea. Azula watches it swirl inside her cup then settle. She can see her own face like this. A high, narrow nose. Sharp eyes. An oval face. If Azula strains, she can see hints of Ozai’s features. Mostly, she just sees her mother. Always her mother.

Azula left the palace because she was tired of being confined by expectations. She wanted to make her own path. But how can she when she bears the face of a ghost? When she sits upon the throne of the murdered?

Her tea scalds her tongue. Azula tells herself that good firebenders don’t feel burns, and forces herself not to put down the cup. Then she sees Zuko’s scar.

“Sorry,” she apologises, feeling guilty for the thought. All firebenders can be burned. They just pretend otherwise. Azula isn’t above _anyone_ – least of all Zuko.

“Hm?” Zuko looks up from his own tea. When Azula provides no explanation, he moves on. “I think you should talk to mother.”

“I _have,_ ” Azula sighs in exasperation. “That’s the problem. We can’t talk without getting angry.”

Zuko shrugs and spreads his palms. “I don’t know, try writing or something. You said the problem is the words, right? So just speak without talking.”

Azula halts in the middle of her rebuttal and sits back in her seat. Zuzu might be onto something. Azula has always known exactly what to say to make someone’s gears turn, right up until it mattered to her personally. Conquering Ba Sing Se? That was easy. Manipulating the Dai Li? Even easier. But trying to convince her father not to throw her away?

Impossible.

She thinks of how writing letters to Toph and Suki lets her say things that she tells herself she should never say aloud, and of the letter that sits in her bag still, asking if Mai and Ty Lee would be willing to give their friendship another try. Not all letters are meant to be sent. But if Azula wrote one for Ursa—

It’s worth a try. _More_ than worth a try. Azula hasn’t forgiven Ursa, not yet, but she is tired of drowning in her rage. Moving on isn’t always about forgiveness. Sometimes you simply turn over in the night and realise things weren’t the same as they were before. That it no longer consumes you.

Azula isn’t the girl her mother left behind. She isn’t the girl she became after Ursa left, either. Azula finishes her tea and fetches parchment and ink, wandering outside to write.

There is so much to say. Always. Azula feels the enormity of it weighing down upon her shoulders. How to encapsulate the absence? The strange, detached mourning for a parent who is still alive, but did not want you enough to stay?

Azula thought, some days, that her mother was dead. That Ozai killed her and lied. Other times, she knew in her bones that Ursa had abandoned her the way everyone does eventually. Ursa left without explanation, so Azula was forced to imagine her own. She knew Mai and Ty Lee thought similarly. They pitied her. Ty Lee showing her how to do her own hair, Mai setting up targets and practicing knife throwing alongside Azula in silence.

There is nothing Azula can say to make Ursa understand. The whispers, the stares. The way the eyes increased in the shadows until Azula stood beneath her father’s invasive light in the hope of the slightest shred of security. The children at school always spoke of their parents, then turned to Azula eagerly. _What’s your mother like?_ they would ask, and recoil when Azula told them her mother was gone.

Azula grew up alienated. She grew up dreading the confirmation of her mother’s death, or her departure. Either way meant a kind of farewell. Azula imagined her mother being so desperate for an escape from her monstrous daughter that she took the first available exit. But what, Azula didn’t know.

She puts her brush to the parchment and begins writing. Something inside her chest unknots with each stroke of the brush, and for the first time since they arrived Azula feels like she can breathe. The letter won't fix everything. It won't erase the years she spent convinced that her mother hates her, and it won't change the fact that Ursa was afraid of her own daughter. But it will clear the air. A controlled, contained release rather than a violent explosion of words that Azula cannot stop. This way, Azula can edit and re-write so that Ursa _understands._

That, she thinks, is the root of their problem. They still don't understand each other. Maybe the letter will help things change. Easing the way for forgiveness, later, but first for neutrality. To be able to exist together peacefully even if they have not repaired all their burned bridges.

Ursa made her dessert. Azula can smell it cooking in the kitchen. Ursa has not announced her return or come to speak with Azula, but even though she must be angry, she still made more persimmon tarts. If Azula goes inside, she knows she will find one cooling on the bench. Her own – separate from the smaller, less carefully shaped tarts that will be fed to the neighbours or handed out at the markets.

Zuko doesn’t like persimmons. He says the texture is too strange, both soft and firm. It is how Azula knows that Ursa made the tarts specifically for her. It feels like love. A strange, silent declaration of love, even after everything. The fighting. Azula throwing old wounds in Ursa's face.

She closes her eyes against her swelling emotions. Azula finally has the family she always dreamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like this fic has a lot less momentum than with the last. it's basically just my sand pit where i get to throw Azula and Ursa in and see what happens, which doesn't lend itself to many dramatic plot lines when you confine it to Hira'a and the aftermath of canon. at least not in the way i've set it up, whoops.  
> i'm aiming for this to be shorter than the last because i think people will lose interest a lot more quickly so i need to start resolving things soon


	12. earthshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> earthshine - sunlight reflecting from the earth illuminating the moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so slight trigger warnings for brief themes of colonialism and imperialism, such as forced dispossession of peoples and the banning of local languages and tradition. the Fire Nation is influenced by a range of cultures, but i've found that the two most prominent influences are China and Japan. as someone who has studied imperial Japan, a lot of my knowledge leaks into how i write the Fire Nation and how i imagine their policies impacted people in other nations.   
> again, TRIGGER WARNING for colonialism and imperialism.

Azula watches for a reaction. No matter how quietly she follows her mother around the house or trails after her in the markets, Ursa’s expression remains as mild-mannered as ever. There is no indication she has even received the letter, much less read it through. If she had, there would be _something_ in her body language. Anger. Frustration. Maybe sadness, if Azula was inclined to write sad letters. But there is nothing. It’s like someone came and smoothed out all of Ursa’s edges until there was only a soft, malleable core. She doesn’t react. She doesn’t talk about herself or how she is feeling – which even Azula does now.

She remembers her mother as someone dignified and proud. Ursa was always concerned with appearances and courtly etiquette, but she still showed emotion in the palace. Pride with Zuko, shame with Azula, fear with Ozai. Now there is nothing. The closest she has come to any expression of emotion is when her children first arrived unexpectedly, and again when Azula pushed the line as far she could and found the one thing Ursa refused to let go.

 _Maybe she went to Koh,_ Azula thinks to herself. She snickers quietly but it doesn’t feel funny. Ursa didn’t have her face stolen by a spirit. She is right in front of Azula with her own face and her own words, but she won’t _use_ any of them. If Ursa could just explain to Azula, if she could just tell Azula honestly how she feels rather than trying to maintain her façade as a perfect, smiling mother, then Azula would feel more at ease. Sometimes, the whole house seems fake. Azula trying to be on her best behaviour, even when it fails, Zuko trying to be less abrasive, and Ursa wandering around like someone sucked the soul from her body.

Azula doesn’t need a perfect mother. She wants a real one.

“Do you think she’s ignoring me?” Azula asks Zuko over tea.

He pauses mid-sip, hands stilling. His expression is unsettled. Zuko has always been an honest person. He can’t help it. He never learned to control himself the way that Azula did – everything shows openly on his face. Zuko also thinks that Ursa is ignoring the letter.

“I’m sure it’s not like that,” he says instead of answering her question. He sighs into his tea and puts the cup down. “Honestly, Azula? I don’t know what’s going on with her. I want to believe she’s just scared. We can’t force her to read anything, or to talk to you. If she never comes around then that’s on her, not you Azula. You did everything you could.”

Azula scoffs and folds her arms. “Really, Zuzu? You’re trying to tell me that none of this is my fault?”

“Look,” Zuko sighs again. “I’m not saying you were perfect. I wasn’t either, and we all know how that ended. But I _am_ saying that we were children, and they were the adults, and we can’t be held responsible for how they chose to respond.”

“You’ve been talking to Katara.”

“Just a little,” Zuko admits freely. He motions towards his room. “I think Toph wrote you a letter too.”

Azula’s eyebrow shoots upwards. “Toph _wrote_ a letter?”

“Dictated, really.”

“…. That makes more sense. I hope it was Suki. She has actually legible handwriting.”

Azula stares expectantly at Zuko. He looks at her after a long moment of silence.

“Did you want it now..?” he tries slowly.

“Obviously, yes.”

Zuko stands and retrieves the letter. He passes it to Azula without comment and lets her turn away to read it in privacy. There are no secrets between them. Not important ones, anyway. They long came to an agreement that they each need to be informed in case anything impacts on their ruling.

Azula doesn’t tell Zuko quite everything – for example, he doesn’t need to know that the ministers still call him the failure who lost his Agni Kai. She also knows that Zuko keeps some things from her, too. Things that could hurt her. Like what people said about her when she couldn’t leave her room, after they overthrew their father.

It doesn’t matter anymore. Only the present does. Azula opens the letter.

 _It’s not about winning the fight,_ reads someone’s scrawl. Azula doesn’t recognise the handwriting, but the words are definitely Toph’s.

_Sometimes all you need is one good hit. These bozos don’t understand. You can’t always go head-on from the start. It’s about waiting for the right moment. If one hit is all you can get, it’s still better than rushing in unprepared and getting your ass knocked flat. I was a champion earthbender. I know these things, Blue._

_Trust me. You’re gonna be fine, and when you come back we’ll all be glad to see you. Mai and Suki and Ty Lee are all here, you know. The ministers are super scared and it’s hilarious._

Azula blinks, then searches for the missing pages. The ‘letter’ reads more as the end summary of one of Toph’s infamous motivational speeches, rather than an actual letter. Letters are supposed to be _structured._ They follow stages and have a clear opening and conclusion. If Azula sent a letter like Toph does, the ministers would question her sanity.

It is exactly like Toph to send her a page of ramblings without context. Azula runs her fingers over the words and feels that it is somehow exactly what she needs.

“Do the check,” she tells Zuko. “The palm thing.”

She gently heats her hands and places them atop of Zuko’s. He hums, then nods.

“You’re fine. It isn’t burning me.”

Azula withdraws and picks up her tea instead. Her hands aren’t hot. Only a controlled warmth. Her mental state is stable and Zuko doesn’t seem at all concerned, even with her heart trapped inside a compression chamber. Ursa ignored the letter. Whether she has read it or not, she chose not to respond to Azula. But Azula is still stable. Zuko just confirmed as much.

Is that bad? Does that mean Azula really doesn’t care for her mother? If she loved Ursa then wouldn’t she be more upset?

Part of her feels like a bad daughter. The other parts of her are _tired._ Azula has tried everything she can and if Ursa doesn’t want to read the letter, if Ursa doesn’t want to fix their relationship, then it’s Ursa’s problem alone. Azula lead the trip here, but that was for Zuko’s sake. Not hers. She was happy without her mother and she will be happy again once she leaves. Ursa is the only one missing out.

“Come on, Dum-Dum.” Azula drags Zuko to his feet. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Zuko’s confusion never disappears as they walk around the edge of the island. Hira’a isn’t big. It would take a matter of hours to trace the circumference. Azula intends to take her time and drag it out as much as possible. Zuko may not understand why she suddenly wants to go for a walk, but he doesn’t have to understand. It isn’t their dynamic. Azula acts, and Zuko pretends to know why until he finally gives up and admits otherwise. He has never needed a reason to support her. Even if Azula told him right now that she wants to run away from Hira’a and leave their mother in the past where she belongs, he would pack their belongings even as he tries to talk her out of it. Zuko is funny like that.

She wants to speak with him about Ozai. They stop for a moment to breathe – neither as fit as they used to be, with the absence of war and ceaseless running and training – and Azula seizes the moment.

“Do you think we made a mistake? Locking father away, I mean.”

Zuko kneels and looks away from her. Sullen like he hasn’t been in months.

“Everyone keeps telling me that,” he confesses between his teeth. The confession clearly pains him and he slumps further. “After the invasion, everyone told me I was making a mistake. All the ministers. The guards. Then when you were unavailable, they tried bullying me into reversing the decision. _Let your father go. He’s the only one who can run this nation._ But you know what Azula? As much as that night haunts me, I don’t think we made a mistake.”

Azula places her hand on Zuko’s shoulder. He looks up and smiles lopsidedly.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he repeats almost to himself. “Okay Lala? We did the right thing. It wasn’t just us he was hurting. It was everyone.”

Azula knows, logically, that Ozai spearheaded the destruction. It wasn’t only the obvious things, like the war and the burning cities, or the genocide of the Southern Water Tribe. Those left scars both visible and unseen. There were other things too. Banning local languages. Telling people they were second-class citizens and installing Fire Nation aristocracy as the ruling class. Burning the history books, changing names, refusing to allow traditional dress unless it was that of the Fire Nation’s…

His policies were hurting people. Even if Azula and Zuko were willing to accept the harm he did to them as a father, even if they were willing to continue suffering under him, Ozai was not a good leader. Someone would have taken him down eventually. From a purely logistical view, Ozai was a terrible leader. Alienating the nations from each other. Attempting to force his way to victory. Really, his only significant contributions to the dynasty were _Azula’s._ Once she removes the emotion from the situation, all they did was depose an unacceptable leader. Not their father. Azula would not feel guilty for removing a minister, so why should she feel guilt over her father?

Zuko is a prickly creature. Azula waves her hand vaguely near his hair as a comforting gesture. When he gets upset, he withdraws and self-isolates. Breaking his shell is difficult.

“Father is being transferred to a new prison,” Azula admits. She rocks on her heels. “That’s part of the reason why I planned this trip. So you wouldn’t have to see him being transferred.”

Zuko looks up in shock. “Azula, _what?_ ”

“I ordered it months ago. As soon as I came out from my room.” Azula worries at her lip with her teeth then crouches beside Zuko. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“I would have been either way, Azula.”

Zuko clearly wants to say more but he bites his tongue. They have both been working on controlling their tempers. Zuko’s mellowed after years of exile and realising home was no longer his, but he still has moments where it resurfaces. Mostly, he yells. Azula finds it funny. All noise with no action. Azula is usually the opposite with her own outbursts.

Azula hadn’t considered how Zuko would feel when he found out she didn’t tell him about Ozai’s transfer. She was only thinking about how he would feel if he kept trying to visit Ozai and getting turned away, as he did during the months Azula locked herself in her room. Sometimes, all she can see is the clear line stretching out beneath her. She can see the result she wants. She can see what path she needs to take. Nothing else matters but that line. Azula hadn’t considered anything else, including how to break the news to Zuko. She had to blackmail the Head of Security and the Minister of Internal Affairs to get the transfer approved.

They always said the Fire Nation was an absolute monarchy. Azula begs to differ. No absolute monarchy requires that much paperwork from so many different officials. Zuko will be horrified if he finds out, but Azula hadn’t cared at the time. She just wanted Ozai gone. It didn’t matter what it took or who she had to threaten.

“I’m glad you told me,” Zuko says sometime after they resume talking. There is no anger on his face. Only faint longing. “I wish you’d said something sooner, but I get it. You were only trying to protect me.”

Azula thinks to all the ministers that told her she should assign Iroh as her regent, not Zuko. All the people who told her to step down. _For your own protection,_ they said. Then they slowly increased their hold until Azula couldn’t breathe. There was no room.

Hearing it from Zuko, she feels as though she has made a mistake. She ran from the palace and entrusted it to the Kyoshi Warriors because she was tired of everyone deciding her fate for her. Of calling her too unstable, too flighty to manage it herself. Now she has done the same to Zuko. One step forward, two steps back.

Azula still cannot find it in herself to regret not telling Zuko. Ozai is now far, far away from them. They no longer have to worry if they made the right decision, because he will not be around to remind them. Whether Azula made a good choice in transferring him or not, Azula got the result she wanted. Her ministers will get over themselves. Eventually, Zuko will forgive her as well.

When they return to Ursa’s home, they find her in the garden talking to a tall, dark-haired man with a kind smile. Azula pauses in her stride to observe him. Nervous tremor in his left hand, a long line of scarring running underneath his collar. Farmer, perhaps? Definitely someone who had contact with the war, one way or another.

“And who might you be?” Azula greets coldly. She steps away from Zuko to give them both room to bend. She would think she is being paranoid, but Zuko also slides into a defensive stance. They don’t know this man.

The stranger glances between them and Ursa. “I’m Ikem,” he says finally, like that will explain anything.

Zuko remains hostile. Azula lets him bluster with threats while she puzzles through the stranger’s identity, eyes narrowing. His name is Ikem. Farmer, potentially. Contact with either the war or the people that pursued it. He seems deeply familiar with Ursa, on top of his knowledge of the garden.

It clicks.

“You’re Ursa’s lover,” Azula realises aloud. She scoffs loudly and kicks at the dirt, dropping her stance. What a waste. She heads inside and doesn’t bother watching her back. There isn’t anything someone like Ikem could do to her that she would fear.

If Ursa won’t even do Azula the courtesy of pretending to read her letter- Azula’s attempt to fix things after their fight- then Azula won’t do her the courtesy of pretending to socialise with her replacement. Ursa lost her children but gained Ikem. When Azula leaves, the two can get married and have children and replace her whole family. Starting anew. Azula hopes Ursa does things better, this time around. It would be a shame to repeat the same disaster twice.

“Azula, wait.” Ursa latches onto Azula’s arm, hands firm and steady. She slowly pulls Azula to the side. “Please, just give me a moment. That’s all I need.”

Azula rolls her eyes. “I don’t have anything to lose. Tell me whatever garbage you want me to hear then let me go.”

Ursa falters. “That was Ikem.”

“I know that.”

“Right, of course you do.” Ursa sighs heavily, looking for a moment as if she wished she were elsewhere. “You never let me explain why I was talking to Ikem.”

Azula shrugs. “You were lonely. He was there. I _get it,_ now can I go?”

“He first saw me just before the funeral,” Ursa interjects anyway. She continues regardless of Azula’s groans. “He was kind. He said he knew how it feels to lose someone. After that, he helped me. Ikem brought food when I didn’t have the energy to cook. He told me stories about my parents from all the years I missed, and he never asked about the palace. It felt like he was the only person willing to let me make a fresh start.”

Azula hates that her mother explained anyway, and she hates that it answers some of her unspoken questions. She wants to remain angry at Ursa. Azula embarrassed herself by being vulnerable and writing the letter, but Ursa didn’t care enough to reciprocate. Except now she is. Baring her soul, answering the points in Azula’s letter.

Azula tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone loved to bring up my former marriage.” Ursa grimaces, and her back straightens as if the mere mention of her past can summon the Fire Lady she used to be. “Hira’a is isolated – there was no risk of mainlanders finding out that I had returned. Ozai would have suppressed the information, anyway. But everyone constantly tried asking me what Ozai was like. They called my life glamorous and wanted to know how I managed to capture his attention. They blamed me for the split, of course. Just like they blamed me for catching his eye and not having the money to pay him to leave me alone.”

“You read my letter.”

“I did.”

“And you _lied._ ”

“I never lied,” Ursa tries gently. She holds Azula’s hands closer. “I didn’t know how to respond. I was lost. We were never close, Azula.”

“And whose fault is that?” Azula snorts.

There is a thudding noise outside. Azula cannot be sure if it is Zuko falling over, Ikem falling over, or the two fighting each other. She knows which is most likely and sighs internally.

“I was cruel.” Ursa looks Azula in the eye. “I’m sorry. I was so focused on winning the battle between myself and Ozai that I forgot you were more than just his pawn. You were _my_ daughter too.”

“You never treated me like I was.”

“I know.” Ursa’s eyes are sad. “I regret it.”

Azula breaks eye contact and tries to sallow around the emotion rising up her throat. She coughs discretely into her palm. She still struggles with allowing herself to feel things, from time to time. Ursa will not use it against her. This is her mother. Imperfect, honest. _Real._

“I didn’t expect much.” Azula curls her arms around herself and looks Ursa in the eye. “When I wrote the letter. But I thought you would at least read it. You acted like you didn’t even know it existed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.” Azula marshals her thoughts and herds them into a coherent order. “For either of us. We can’t just say sorry then keep fighting about the same issues. I don’t need you to rehash the past for me and explain every detail about why you left, but I hate that you keep being so elusive. Did-“ Azula’s voice breaks. “Did you really hate me that much?”

She waits painfully for the response. Ants crawl inside her veins and she fights the urge to scratch them out.

“Oh Azula,” Ursa says gently. “I never hated you. I just wasn’t good at showing how much I loved you.”

There’s more to the story than that. Azula has overheard conversations and initiated her own. There is more than Ursa being bad at expressing affection, especially since _Zuko_ never once doubted that Ursa loved him. He didn’t think he was a monster the way that Azula did. She knows that if she told Ursa what she did to get Ozai transferred, Ursa would be horrified.

Azula doesn’t need her mother’s approval. She doesn’t need her validation. All she needs is what is being offered right now – love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azula: Zuko and i have no secrets :)  
> also Azula: ... actually, maybe one or two
> 
> i've done some thinking and actually have a bit of an outline for the rest of the fic, so we are no longer (mostly) winging things! i got a bit sidetracked with Ursa and Azula but i remembered that i do actually have some plot-stuff to resolve. whoops.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay!! you may have seen me posting a new fic, so i got a bit sidetracked with that. i also wrote the ending for another fic of mine. this chapter kind of got put on the backburner for a bit lol then i ran into major problems trying to finish and edit. if the Ezume scenes are a bit clunky, that's why

School feels different after Azula’s confrontation- and healing- with Ursa. Quainter. Less dangerous. There is nothing Azula needs to prove anymore. Not to these people. Azula will leave this island and return to her responsibility of running the nation, while they clap their hands and skip class and act like teenaged idiots. Azula shouldn't envy them. They have taken different paths. Azula would never have been able to live like that. She would always become who she is now.

Ezume watches the board with a blank expression, her chin resting on her palm. Azula sits next to her and moves the textbook between them. Ezume's friends don't seem to be here - likely by the ocean instead of studying. Ezume yawns loudly. She notices Azula and nods in greeting.

They haven't spoken often since the incident where Ezume threw sand at Azula. They wandered through the back streets until they were somewhat dry, then sat by the water fountain in the middle of the square. Azula didn't want to go home because she had fought with Ursa. Ezume didn't want to go home for reasons that Azula can only wonder at. 

She could guess, if she tried. Azula has always been able to read people. She could poke and nudge and pry the story from Ezume's reluctant hands, but she won't because it is Ezume's to tell. Azula doesn't care enough to dig for the truth. She only cares that Ezume continues to allow Azula to sit next to her and leech off her warmth. 

Ezume brushes the hair from her face in sleepy irritiation, torn between battling with her hair and focusing on the teacher. Her movements become increasingly agitated and Azula can feel her anxiety whistling to a boil. It feels familiar. Azula once attempted to cut her hair because she was furious at herself for still having a topknot when Ozai had his stripped from him. She wanted to start anew. It was only her maid's rapid intervention that has allowed Azula to keep her long hair. 

Azula watches for a moment, then slides closer before she can think otherwise. Ezume tugs uselessly and trying to sloppily pull it back.

“I’ll help,” Azula offers. She doesn't repeat the sentence when Ezume tilts her head in confusion. 

Ezume looks up with her dark, dark eyes but does not object. Instead, the corners of her mouth curl a little, like she finds Azula’s offer funny. Her hands fall to her side as Azula neatly and efficiently ties Ezume’s hair back. She takes strands of Ezume’s dark hair and twines them into braids, adding a decorative flourish that prevents the hairstyle from looking too plain. It will be easy to undo as well, but Azula doesn’t tell Ezume. She will figure it out later.

Strangely, Azula doesn’t feel so jealous of Ezume anymore. She no longer wants to supplant her, taking over her life like a cuckoo in the nest. Azula only wants to be near Ezume. Talking to her, braiding her hair. Sitting with her in lunch while Ezume tells her long-winded and shockingly unfunny jokes. What surprises Azula is how much she wants to listen to them anyway.

Azula’s life may not be perfect, but no one’s is. She doesn’t know what is wrong with Ezume’s family, but she knows enough to feel almost smugly satisfied that at least hers is working things through. Excluding the father rotting in prison; may Agni take his soul in the night.

Somewhere between lunch and the resumption of class, a messenger nods breathlessly on the door and shoves a note towards the teacher.

"Slow down," the teacher scolds, and he cowers before her in shame. "There's no rush."

She opens the note. Her expression turns complicated - a strange combination of emotion that Azula cannot decipher.

"Akira," the teacher says, and Azula straightens her back after taking a moment to remember her fake name. "Your aunt needs you home immediately. A.... particular guest has arrived unexpectedly."

Her mind blanks. Mai? Ty Lee? No, they would never travel independently of each other unless it was urgent, and Azula would know by now. She grabs her satchel and moves to leave, then looks back at Ezume. 

"I promised to help with your homework," Azula says. "On history."

Ezume shrugs. "It's fine. You have stuff on. Don't worry about me."

And Azula is worried, she realises belatedly. Ezume has grown increasingly withdrawn in class. She doesn't take notes like she used to. Her friends no longer attend class and Azula has seen Ezume leaving through the school gates long after everyone else has left. Something is wrong with Ezume.

There is no time to continue wondering, however. Azula ignores the curious whispers of her classmates and takes long paces to hurry home. The guest could be Toph - that would be nice. Or Suki. The wording of the message makes Azula think that the guest is not from the Fire Nation so she dismisses the handful of other candidates. 

She vaults over the gate rather than wasting time, supporting her weight with one hand. Azula immediately spots a flash of familiar orange. She closes her eyes as the garden's occupants turn to face her.

“Uh,” Aang says guiltily, hiding his glider behind his back. “…. I’m here for a fishing trip?’

Zuko facepalms. The sound echoes through the yard. Azula deeply empathises, watching the gate with longing. Aang still can’t lie to save his life.

She hasn’t spoken with him since that night. Her mental health was too poor at first. Then she resurfaced from her valley and resumed her duties, but she still couldn’t bear to see him. Aang visited for various negotiations and diplomatic functions and spoke excitedly with Zuko, but Azula always found a way to be conveniently absent. They were never friends. Azula nearly kill him, then later helped teach him to firebend. That hardly makes a friendship.

Looking at Aang reminds her of the comet. Of kneeling on the ground and watching her father lose his connection to Agni, a key piece of his soul permanently removed. She remembers hearing him scream from his cell. Ozai promised all sorts of things in the early days. That if Azula freed him then they could rule the Fire Nation together. That she would have his pride forever. That he wouldn’t kill her in his escape.

The one thing he never promised was love. Azula closed the door after the first month and never reopened it. Eventually Ozai stopped asking, and Azula stopped listening.

She doesn’t blame Aang. She doesn’t. But when she tries to sleep at night, she wishes he had let her kill Ozai. Then they could have ended their ill-fated relationship in one night, rather than prolonging their misery for the next few decades.

"Come inside, Avatar Aang," Ursa invites with a nervous glance over her shoulder. It is the gesture of the hunted. "Before my neighbours see you."

"Too late for that," Azula snorts. "The whole island must know by now."

Ursa ushers them inside anyway with practiced soothing noises. Aang positions himself awkwardly by the table, kneeling while Zuko and Azula stand. Azula rolls her eyes at him. Still fleeting with courage in normal situations, but full of bold courage where others would flounder. He didn’t hesitate when facing the Fire Lord. Even when Ozai had his hands wrapped around Aang’s throat, aiming to _burn,_ Aang did not flinch. It was before the battle that he faltered. Stirring in his sleep, asking Zuko endlessly if they could find another way.

Aang is not a coward. He avoids conflict but understands what must be done. Azula used to mock his pacifism. It still seems a ridiculous concept to her – pacifism did not end the war, after all. But she thinks that if everyone tried their hardest to avoid conflict the way that Aang does, then maybe there would never have been a war in the first place. It’s a thought she does not particularly enjoy, but still one that niggles at the back of her mind with Aang seated before her.

“Why did you come?” she sighs finally. Zuko passes her a cup of tea and she ignores it. “You were busy with Katara and the negotiations in the south.”

Aang rocks in place like a child.

“I got bored,” he shrugs. “The negotiations are pretty much done and Katara had everything handled. But we got a message from the Kyoshi Warriors-“ Azula’s eyes cut to Zuko, whose brow furrows. “And they said they needed you guys back at the palace as soon as possible.”

“What happened?” Zuko demands. He kneels next to Aang and Azula is forced to follow. “Things were _fine_ when we left. The court knows how to handle decisions without us, and the Kyoshi Warriors were there to keep the ministers in check.”

Aang’s smile dies. His eyes flicker between them. “Yeahhhh, about that. Minor problem. Turns out some of the ministers are still loyal to Ozai and they want you both deposed.”

“WHAT?” Zuko explodes outwards, launching himself to his feet. He gestures furiously to the table. “They can’t do that! We haven’t even been gone a _month._ There’s no grounds for deposal!”

Azula’s chest goes very, very cold. She stares at a point somewhere on the wall in front of her and tries not to think. Deposal wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. No one would ever demand anything of her again. She could finally sleep. She could go to Toph’s earthbending school and see if Toph has grown any gentler with her teaching.

Zuko’s voice warbles through her ears. Azula doesn’t care about Aang’s explanation. The ministers want her gone and always have, ever since they realised her accomplishments were beginning to outshine their own. That is the cycle of things. You seize power, then lose. Someone will always come along to take the place you fought so hard for. The ministers don’t care that Azula sacrificed her entire world so that something better could happen. She gave up her father. She gave up all hope for herself. She was willing to do anything just so that someone- not Ozai- could take the throne instead. Now they want to take it all away.

Azula narrows her eyes. She flexes her hands and exhales. She isn’t who she used to be. Not as sharp, not as violent, not as ruthlessly determined. But she still remembers the echoes. If the ministers think that Azula will just roll over and let them seize power for themselves, then they are more stupid than she thought.

She knows Zuko feels the same. His jaw is grim and determined.

“Oh,” Aang adds as something occurs to him. “Toph is in Caldera too, by the way.”

“She’s _what now?_

The whole sordid affair spills out onto the carpet. It pools beneath them like blood. The Kyoshi Warriors kept the ministers in check until the shock value wore off. Mai- because of course it was Mai- was the first to realise that something was wrong. Conversation with Suki surfaced previously unnoticed details. The ministers were meeting at odd hours, cancelling sessions and rescheduling them at a whim, bringing in all kinds of messengers and contractors through the back gates.

Mai confronted them alone. Still stubborn in her pride. Sly remarks and her carefully bored, uninterested tone – the ministers didn’t see her as a threat. Not until Mai’s own father arrived at court and declared her an enemy.

Azula hates that her throat constricted thinking of how Mai must have felt. Now Mai and the Kyoshi Warriors are engaged in a silent war against the ministers. Toph arrived to help hold the tides, forcing metal doors to remain closed and others to open. Neither side has made any open moves but it is only a matter of time. Zuko and Azula need to leave.

“Why are they calling for our deposal?” Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. Genuine confusion spreads across his face. “I don’t understand. Things were going well. We were finally working together on proposals.”

Aang shifts uncomfortably. He raises and lowers his hands. “I guess they just wanted power, Zuko. I don’t really know. They said they were tired of the whole regent system you have going. They want you one Fire Lord only, not two.”

“No one had a problem when it was Iroh who was going to be regent,” Azula snaps. She slams her hands on the table and it buckles beneath her strength. “They all wanted that doddy old fool to come back and do what _they_ wanted, so I could just be the silent Fire Lord on the throne. They don’t care about us sharing the throne. They just want to isolate us so that it’s easier to either manipulate us or install their own puppet.”

“I know that, Azula.” Aang’s eyes shine with sincerity. “I do. It’s unfair. I’m just saying what I’ve heard, that’s all.”

Azula bites her tongue and leans back. She isn’t going down without a fight. In the early days, she wondered if she could ever be a good Fire Lord. Everything felt like too much. _Can I really do this? Is it really possible?_

She thought she pulled herself together. Dragging everything into place through sheer force of will, forcing the court to work as one. Zuko was the nice one who rallied and encouraged. Azula was there to get stuff done. The ministers finally came around and started smiling more, nodding and complimenting her. They believed in her. Or rather, her potential. No one expected much of her by the time she left for Hira’a and it was infuriating, but there were trickles of change. Hints of a better future.

Now nothing she does can ever be good enough for them. They demanded she jump higher than she is capable of alone, then refused to help her reach. They would rather stand back and criticise than help her better understand how to run the Fire Nation. They decided she wasn’t good enough before her hands even touched the throne – now they desperately want to see her drown. No one wants Azula to swim instead. They want to be proven right about her. Whatever compromises or negotiations she might make upon her return will only be taken as proof that she lacks the iron will to be Fire Lord. Refusal to do so will be taken as proof that she is too stubborn and prideful to be Fire Lord. There is no winning scenario.

Azula will fight anyway, because she knows no other way. This is _her_ throne. They may not like it – and maybe someone else would be better, a thought Azula refuses to contemplate – but it is hers now. She will not let them take it away. They have already taken too much.

Zuko takes their mother outside to gently explain the situation. Azula reaches for her tea and finally asks the question burning through her throat.

“Why did you stop me from killing him?” Azula asks without looking at Aang. She picks at a loose thread in her robes. “Ozai. It would have been easier to just let me do it.”

“Something being easy doesn’t mean it’s right,” Aang says. He smiles, crookedly. He looks like a teenager now. Less like a burdened child. “You can always choose to take the hard path.”

“What if it’s too hard?”

Aang shrugs. “Then you turn back. Life is all about choices, Azula. You taught me that.”

Azula blinks. She waves a hand in front of Aang’s face and he tilts his head in confusion.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if you’re blind as Toph,” Azula replies, still waving her hands in front of his face. Then she clicks her fingers by his ears and Aang bats her hands away in annoyance. “Or deaf, perhaps. How on earth did I teach you anything beyond a proper stance?”

Aang winces at the memory of Azula’s method of teaching. She once had him meditate on sun-warmed rocks until they began burning, then surveyed him coolly. Azula’s only remark was that if he had truly understood the point of his meditation then the rocks wouldn’t have burned him.

“How does that make any sense?” Aang howled as he hopped furiously towards the fountain.

Teaching Aang wasn’t as awful as Azula expected. His attention span was dismal and his focus appalling, but he learned in a similar way to Azula. Not everything has to be explained to death. Sometimes you just need to let go and do it. Your body fills in the gaps. Aang understood that.

“You chose to lie for Zuko,” Aang says. He absently draws a shape in the dirt. “No one made you do that. And no one made you turn against your father, in the end. Those were all your decisions. Even when you knew it would hurt you. And yeah, you made some bad calls in the past, and you went down the wrong road. But then you chose to turn back. That’s why I knew I couldn’t kill Ozai. What if, someday, he also chooses to turn back? To become good?”

Aang shrugs, as if his words were nothing special. Azula feels cold. She once tried to kill this kind fool, who extends forgiveness and second chances without a second thought. Aang actually believes himself. Azula can tell. He believes that Ozai might one day redeem himself – the grandson of the man who killed Aang’s people, and the man who erased the remnants. It wasn’t Azulon who ordered the textbooks be changed. That was all Ozai. An attempt to prove himself worthy to his father.

“I don’t think father is capable of change,” Azula says finally. She lays on her back and watches the ceiling. “Is that so horrible of me? You, who has more reason than anyone to hate him, doesn’t. But I don’t think he will ever change.”

“That’s okay,” Aang says quietly. His smile is small but still present, gently understanding. “Not everything is up to us. We can’t make people change and we can’t make them see the way out. They have to find it themselves. And if Ozai never does? Then it’s a shame, because he’s missing out on having a really great daughter and an awesome son.”

Azula bites down hard on her lip. Aang isn’t trying to throw salt in the wound. He means what he says.

She ducks her head and cries silently. When she finally finishes and wipes her eyes discretely, embarrassed to be crying at all, Aang is babbling endlessly about his air bison and tracing wild figures in the air. He is the biggest fool Azula has ever met, and his very existence tore her family apart. But between the spidery threads of her mind, some quiet part of her is glad for having met Aang. He helped them all turn around. If not by convincing them, but by presenting an option neither Zuko nor Azula had ever considered. He was their crossroads. The point in which you have to decide what direction you want your life to follow. Zuko and Azula wavered and backtracked and circled, but they made the right choice. 

Azula hopes she can make it again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i briefly contemplated fleshing the Ezume scenes out more but they were more like threads i'm laying for the next chapter i guess? we're kinda going to half-wrap things up then come back to her later. i wanted to write more of her and develop her relationship with Azula but that hasn't really worked out so far, which i think is okay. you can't have everything i guess. 
> 
> 42,000 words in and i'm getting a bit burned out. i'm not abandoning this fic but i may have to either shake up the plot more than i had planned, or post updates a bit slower. we'll see. i feel like i'm losing track of all the threads and can't pull it together properly now that we're moving into the second half of the fic


End file.
